A Song I Think I Heard Before
by Scribbler
Summary: The many faces of Mai. Her story, pre-canon to post-canon, plus the bits canon itself didn't let us see. Duellist Kingdom wasn't the first time she and Jounouchi met - not that either of them knew it at the time. Jounouchi/Mai. FINISHED!
1. Orphan

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**Disclaimer****: **Assiduously not mine.

**A/N****: **This thing has been in the works since late 2008. I've been writing it, on and off, since then and finally finished it when it was roughly ninety-five percent longer than when the idea began. Owing to how long this fic has been on my books, feedback is not only appreciated, it's longed for, hankered after and _craved_ from the bottom of my cynical little heart.

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_**A Song I Think I Heard Before**_

© Scribbler, April 2010.

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**1. Orphan**

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Mai had never felt such an intense desire to run away. It was almost embarrassing. She was tough. She was independent. She was used to taking care of herself. Her parents rarely took an interest; they seemed to view her as a fashion accessory, appeaseable with money and expensive, often inappropriate gifts. She'd developed a hard exterior to compensate. Beyond the odd photo opportunity or glossy magazine interview, she perplexed her parents, as a Rubik's Cube might perplex an intelligent but distracted and impatient child. She suspected they'd only had her because it was the done thing: marry your childhood sweetheart, make your first million, set up a nice home, and have a child. That was the semi-romantic option. The other explanation involved celebrations of that first million and a lot of margaritas.

But that was all incidental, because now her parents were dead, and even those slightly perplexed, chemically whitened, photo-ready smiles no longer came Mai's way. Did teeth burn? She didn't know. The conflagration of their car wreck hadn't left much behind, at any rate. Now her mother and father's siblings were sucking the money out of the estate, and the life out of Mai herself. They were discussing probate, wills, inheritance tax, bequests, executors, and lots of other things Mai, at twelve, couldn't understand. What she _did _understand was that they had her trust fund in their crosshairs, but the normally feisty Mai … really couldn't be bothered to fight for her rights.

For weeks since the funeral it had been nothing but raised voices and strangers traipsing the mansion halls. She felt like she didn't belong in her own home anymore. It wasn't her imagination that her aunts and uncles wished she'd died too. It would have made everything much more convenient – for them. They had no love for a girl they saw as too snobby to associate with them until now, and until her parents' deaths Mai had known them only as faces at family gatherings and names in unflattering stories of the past. Her parents both came from ordinary backgrounds, which her mother called 'common' and her father called 'let's change the subject'. Mai's world had always been wealthy, but when they did talk to their daughter it was usually to remind her how lucky she was, how they'd had none of her advantages growing up, and how their parasitical families were repeating the lives of their parents before them: lazy, crooked and, more of than not, flat broke thanks to some harebrained money-making scheme gone wrong.

Once, she walked into the kitchen to find Auntie Mimi and Uncle Kai deep in conversation. Her mother's sister and brother-in law stopped the moment Mai appeared, pushing around the rice in their bowls without taking a bite. Mai fetched a bag of cookies as fast as she could, not looking at either of them. As the door clicked shut behind her she heard them start up again.

"God, what a surly little cow."

"Cow? Black sheep, more like. Doesn't take after her mother in the slightest."

"You reckon? I always thought they looked like two peas in a pod."

"Well, yes, they _look_ alike, but at least Eiga would have said hello."

Mai resisted the urge to snort. Her mother hated her sister, but it was true: she would never have shown it. Mai's mother was an excellent hostess, an excellent party-goer, an excellent beauty and, if reviewers were to be believed, an excellent actress. Mai had watched some of her films, but they were all boring political dramas and stories about refugees, where her mother's face was carefully streaked with dirt and she talked about war zones and peace treaties. Mai preferred chick flicks, but couldn't tell anyone this, since it wasn't the done thing for Eiga Yutaka's daughter to watch such trash. When interviewers asked Mai what her favourite film was, she was duty-bound to name one of her mother's.

"You're a real Mummy's girl, aren't you?" the interviewers would simper, at which point Eiga would hug her daughter close and Mai would get the full effect of her new perfume line. "I'll bet you want to be an actress too, someday, right?"

Mai would simper right back at them, say she wasn't yet sure what she wanted to do with her life, and then listen with a fixed smile as they chattered on about her following in her father's footsteps instead. He worked in law and had several university degrees under his belt. Mai was expected to excel in her studies as well as charm every insincere reporter she met. With the genes her parents had provided, Mai was supposed to be excellent at everything.

Eiga Yutaka wasn't just excellent, she was Excellent. From the determined straight line of her teeth to the pristine hem of her designer skirt, she exuded confidence and the kind of dignity that made allies of even hard-hearted directors. Mai shared her blonde hair, but had none of her sociability. Mai found it hard to conceal her less attractive emotions with smiles. A hard smirk was usually what masked things she didn't want to show. Her mother could make friends in an instant and forget them in less. Mai never even got as far as that first instant. What was the point, when she was home-schooled and they rarely stayed in one place long enough for her to make friends some other way?

Well, at least they hadn't had any roots until her father insisted on buying a mansion here and installing his daughter in it 'for security'. Mai knew it was actually because his legal practice was a great favourite of Kaiba Corp. He wanted to impress them by committing to a mortgage in the same area Gozaburo Kaiba kept his HQ. Mai was a bargaining chip, like a human wax seal, to mark the place as her father's even when he wasn't around. There had even been talk of introducing her to the Kaiba progeny – probably her father wanting to dig even deeper in the Kaibas' good graces. She could just see him offering her up as a suitable wife someday, like a sacrifice to the gods of commerce. Nobody could ever accuse her father of not planning ahead, even if his thinking was more backward than forward.

He had ruffled Mai's hair like she was some little kid right up to the night he died. She was nearly a teenager, but his brain had somehow remained at the stage where she was a child. He looked more confused than ever when she had a tantrum about something and yelled her age like a weapon.

"You can't treat me like this. I'm twelve years old! I'm practically a teenager already. Why can't I go to the party with you? This is _so_ unfair!"

She remembered the look he'd given her, when she stood in the hall stamping her foot, demanding to be taken along. She was always left behind. It hurt. Other parents took their kids to charity functions. There was even a little anteroom reserved for them – like a grown up crèche, which would have been _so_ embarrassing, except that it was better than being left at home like a pet. It had been raining outside, the thrum against the window providing a soundtrack to her memories like a clip from a horror movie.

"It'll be very boring," her father had said helplessly. "And it'll end in the small hours –"

"So? God, I practically _live_ on my own. Staying up late to go to a party? _So_ not the drama."

Her phrasing had left him stumped, so he'd done what he always did: mumbled into his moustache and excused himself as fast as he could. He could pull off legal miracles against the toughest men and women on the planet, but his own daughter had him running scared because he had no idea how to deal with her. He didn't even _try_.Mai had been left, once again, feeling bitter and wondering at the abnormality of her outburst. She rarely yelled at her parents, though they gave her good cause. Dutiful daughters didn't yell at Mommy and Daddy.

Then again, dutiful Mommies and Daddies didn't abandon their daughters to pitch off an embankment and helter-skelter their Bentleys so the gas tank ruptured and consumed them in a ball of flame so big it could be seen three miles away.

If she had gone with them, would she have died too?

Did it hurt to burn to death, or did the crash kill them before the flames had a chance?

Should she feel guilty about yelling at her dad, or blanking her mother in frustration as they left, when they would be dead only hours later?

The thing was, the halls of the mansion had seemed empty even before their car skidded on the wet road. Mai's entire childhood had been a study in emotional self-sufficiency. She'd learned how to glare at the world until it backed down and strut like a winner even if victory was hollow with nobody there to share it.

At first she thought that if she made a success of herself her parents would sit up and take notice, but of course she was wrong. They were too busy taking cell-phone calls, checking make-up, grumbling about work, chatting flirtily with the help – basically anything other than paying attention to her. Other people told her she was talented, pretty, clever, whatever they thought she wanted to hear, but it never rang true. Those people were either obliged to compliment her because they were paid to, or because they'd noticed her surname. _Nouveau riche_ some said. Absolutely stinking loaded and not afraid to show it off, more like.

Eventually Mai figured out everyone who complimented her actually wanted something, and the only person she should try to please was herself. If she could make herself happy, that was all that really mattered. Like so many other things in her life, if she didn't take care of it, nobody else would. She could take care of herself.

But she couldn't make herself happy after the funerals. She tried. She put on her favourite designer clothes – the ones her mother brought back from Paris as a gift when Mai hadn't even begun to develop the chest to fill them. She always felt like a princess anyway, and could spend hours looking at them in the mirror, pouting and flicking her hair just _so. _

But not this time. This time she stared into the mirror and saw her mother's face. She got very close, so she could see individual pores and the burgeoning bags under her eyes. She had her father's eyes, and something of his hard jaw, but those similarities were dwarfed by her mother's blonde hair. Mai's was cut into an identical bob, ending halfway down an equally identical long neck, and straightened to within an inch of its life, just like Eiga Yutaka's. Mai was practically her mother in miniature.

For one crazy moment Mai considered shaving all her hair off to erase the resemblance, but then thought better of it. She loved her hair. It was a shield from the world when she wanted a private moment in a public place, and brushing it rhythmically was a nice distraction from thoughts that rattled in her brain like broken glass. Plus, she didn't want to say goodbye to her mother in all ways. Maybe they hadn't been the best parents, but Eiga and Tomi Yutaka had been hers, and they had been taken from her before she was ready.

The morass of grief and guilt threatened to consume her, and no pretty clothes could keep it back.

Taking a different approach, Mai got out the gaming cards she'd discovered she was pretty good at – originally a ploy to show her father she could multiply large figures in her head and develop complicated strategies on a moment's notice. One of his other clients, Industrial Illusions, distributed them, so she'd showing off her skills would endear her to her workaholic father. Wrong again, but the satisfaction of winning usually gave Mai a buzz and made her feel good about herself. She went downstairs and played the butler, the cook, and even the cook's talented nephew, but even beating them all didn't make her feel better

"This is stupid," she snapped when she beat the cook's nephew three times in a row. "I hate this stupid game." She didn't mean it, but frustration made her toss down the cards and stalk out. Lesser girls might have gone off to cry, but Mai spent an hour just walking in the grounds trying to work off the turmoil bubbling inside her.

The walls were high and topped with barbed wire. The mansion felt like a prison sometimes. Idly, Mai poked about in the bushes at the far end of the Sunken Rose Garden, which her father had commissioned but never once walked in. the bushes were thick with thorns and offered no way out. There were gates stationed at intervals in the wall, the largest of which was ornate black metal shaped into curls and twists like a choppy sea. Mai's fingers fitted through easily, but all she could see beyond was the long driveway, neatly trimmed on either side and studded with lights like an airstrip to guide cars when they arrived home after dark. Mai turned her face away and caught sight of a figure in an upstairs window of the mansion, but it a trice it was gone, and she thought no more of it.

When she returned to the kitchen the cards she had thrown down were gone. The cook's nephew had taken them. He must have thought she didn't want them and couldn't pass up such an expensive deck. She thought about making him give them back, but decided collecting a new set of cards would give her something to do other than think about … things she really didn't want to think about.

Later, she found that not all her old cards were gone. One had stuck to the sole of her shoe, wedging itself in the groove between sole and heel. It was muddy from her trek through the grounds, but had stuck with her as if with its own sense of tenacity. Harpy Lady had sharp claws and an expression of supreme self-confidence that bordered on arrogance. Most importantly she had wings she could use to get herself the hell out of there whenever she damn well wanted.

Mai stared at the card. Then she tucked it into her pocket. She took inexplicable comfort from knowing it was there when she found Uncle Kai arguing with her father's brother, Uncle Teki, about which boarding school to send her to.

"I'm not going to boarding school," she said primly. "I have a tutor."

"We'll … discuss it later," said Uncle Teki, shooting Uncle Kai a pointed look. "No need to get ahead of ourselves."

_Why not? _she thought._ Seems to me you already have._

They had practically moved in already. Mai suspected their ratty rented apartments were full of other families by now, or soon would be. Her aunts and uncles had looked at the mansion with greedy eyes from then moment they arrived, and pulled open the doors with grasping hands. It would have suited them for her to be someplace else so they could go through everything and make the most of their good fortune.

Mai left her uncles arguing over who they should send into town for more beer. There was a football game on TV tonight and they wanted to watch it on the biggest screen in the lounge. Upstairs her aunts were going through one of the spare rooms, mentally valuing everything while eying each other like rival lionesses over a single piece of prey.

Mai threw herself down on her bed, staring at the ceiling and fighting back the urge to go back downstairs, jab the button to open the front gates and just leave them all to it. Sure, she was tough, but even tough girls had their breaking point.

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It was hard to describe the pain of loss when you couldn't quantify exactly _what_ you'd lost. Mai found it difficult to put words to her connection with her parents, and so found it even more difficult to settle on one form of grief. She found herself watching old episodes of TV shows where characters had died, trying to figure out how the reactions of those left behind compared with her own. The only thing she learned was that death was horrible for those it happened to, but in a lot of ways it was worse for those it touched without taking. Grief didn't have a specific form or timescale, no matter what anyone said about seven stages.

One thing she _did_ learn was that her parents had been right all along: their brothers and sisters _were_ leeches. Sharing chromosomes didn't mean you had to like people. Mai was still a minor, so custody was an issue – mainly who _didn't_ want responsibility for her even in exchange for the large cash sums available.

"It's too difficult for us," Aunt Mimi snapped, drawing closer to Uncle Kai. Their wedding bands clinked as they held hands. "We can't become her legal guardians."

"Why?" Uncle Teki demanded. His hands were spread on the tabletop. He raised one just to thump it down as a fist. "It's just putting your name on a few documents."

"We have responsibilities – _commitments_." She sneered the word. "Something you wouldn't know about, with the way you laze around all day."

"Hey, I can't help it if I can't work. I'm sick. I've got a bad back."

"Have you had it for twenty years?"

"Why you cheeky bit–"

"Regardless of your 'bad back', our commitments can't be cast aside because of a … a …" She searched for the right word.

_Burden?_ Lurking outside the room again, Mai eavesdropped like crazy. She heard more that way. Like anybody was going to tell her anything she actually needed to know?

"A dependant," Aunt Mimi finished.

"But you'd be quite happy to take any money that's on offer," Aunt Riko accused. "Don't even _bother_ denying it, Mimi. I've seen the way you look at this house. I'm surprised you haven't already taken the silverware to a pawn shop."

Aunt Mimi's tone could have cleaved diamonds. "Unlike you, I have standards."

"But not enough to take responsibility for your own sister's daughter."

"I don't see you rushing to take her either. I _did_ see you looking up antique bureau prices on eBay the other day. A bit big to smuggle out under your sweater, Riko. Although …" Aunt Mimi left the rest of the insult unsaid. Where she had a ribcage like a toast rack, Aunt Riko carted around more blubber than an entire pod of whales.

"Hateful cow," Aunt Riko spat, beginning the next round of their ongoing squabble. However much Mai's parents had disliked their siblings, her aunts and uncles loathed each other more.

Mai retreated to her bedroom and did all the things that usually calmed her, but when she finally fell asleep on top of her bedspread her dreams were darker and more disturbing than ever.

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_To Be Continued …_

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**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

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"_So? God, I practically live on my own. Staying up late to go to a party? So not the drama."_

-- Sidefling to Disney's _Kim Possible_.

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	2. Runaway

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**2. Runaway**

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Life continued in this vein from some time. Her remaining family continued to shirk responsibility while coveting the benefits it brought. Mai felt increasingly unwelcome in her own home, and withdrew more and more. She became introverted, spending lots of time in her room. Nobody tried to draw her out of it, or of herself.

She searched the internet for Duel Monsters cards and built up a collection far better than her last. It was frivolous, but it was something with a visible outcome. Her deck plumped out and her skills sharpened as she tried to play herself. Eventually she played the cook's nephew again. He had improved, but she still smashed him – and her old deck – to pieces in a matter of minutes.

"How come you're not in school?" he asked sullenly, throwing down the cards like it was their fault he couldn't play to her standard.

Mai shrugged. Nobody had said anything more about school, and her old tutor had yet to be reinstated in the mansion. Her aunts and uncles apparently had better things to think about than her education. Just like they had better things to think about at mealtimes, when they ordered the cook to make either stodgy food or the kind of airy-fairy dishes big name chefs talked about but nobody ever actually liked. Mai hated most of it, but nobody ever asked her opinion. She sat the dinner table poking things with her chopsticks until allowed to leave, always aware of their eyes on her back as she slunk silently out.

Maybe things would have continued like this for a while longer, if it hadn't been for the night of the storm.

It broke over the house – literally. The sky seemed to crack open on a deluge. Rain pelted the grounds, churning it into mud with the force and size of the droplets. Reduced visibility was a given. It was a storm just like the one that had sent Mai's parents careening off the road.

Mai sat up in bed to watch the lightning. When it illuminated her room she could see herself in her mirror, her face scattered with shadows from the streaky pane. She looked rumpled, her usually straight hair standing out around her head like a frizzy corona. As the flash faded Mai saw her mother in her features again, but the purple of her eyes glittered like her father's used to when he was about to land a big case. She so rarely resembled her father that it was a shock. The stab of pain was also sharp and unwelcome.

Mai went to stand at her French window in just her nightdress, looking out into the miserable weather and watching as her breath fogged the glass. The road that killed her parents was actually outside town, but it might as well have been anywhere. Dead was dead. Gone was gone.

"… better off out of here!" filtered through from the next room, where Uncle Kai and Auntie Mimi stayed. Neither they nor Aunt Riko and Uncle Teki had taken the master suite, where her parents used to sleep. Apparently even they had qualms about jumping into bed with the dead.

"… shush! … hear you!" said Auntie Mimi.

But Uncle Kai would not be placated. "Well it's better she does … has to know how difficult she's being …"

"… _is_ grieving …"

"Ha! You know as well as I do … didn't care about them … just trying to be awkward … time enough … cold-hearted little … never liked us … miserable, ungrateful brat …"

Something cracked inside Mai the way the sky had cracked open. Her spirit oozed out like the innads of a smashed egg. All at once, everything she hadn't been able to feel up to now surged up and out like dirty water gushing out of a blocked drain. She almost gagged and reacted instinctively. The carpet was soft under her knees and palms, but she still tasted bile and felt the backs of her eyes prickle.

She didn't cry. She _wouldn't_.

She threw open the French windows and ran out to stand on the balcony in just her nightdress. The rain was a cold slap, knocking the weepiness right out of her. She threw back her head, spread her arms wide and felt a scream rising in her throat.

Aunt Mimi and Uncle Kai would hear her from here. Probably Aunt Riko and Uncle Teki, too. They'd think she was a nutcase, as well as an unemotional brat. What did they know about being able to feel things? All they ever felt was greed, with a side order of irritation and jealousy. Mai dropped her arms and looked out over the estate that was meant to be hers as the sole heir, but was so obviously _not_.

She had never seen the place where her parents died. The thought popped into her head unannounced.

It was a ridiculous thing to do. She was bound to get pneumonia, or cut her bare feet and get blood poisoning, or run straight into a tree and break her neck. She didn't care. The feel of running – just _running _– was incomparable. Climbing over the edge of her balcony, scrambling down the ivy, hitting the ground and picking up speed made her feel more alive than she had in ages. See, she _could_ feel.

Someone had left the gates open. She pelted through, not even stopping to wonder why security had been relaxed when it never had before. For all they wanted to loot the mansion themselves, her aunts and uncles hated the idea of letting anyone else get their mitts on anything. She should have guessed then that something was up, but she was too focussed on the visceral thrill of running. She needed to feel. She needed to _not think_ for a while.

She didn't know how long or how far she ran. The driveway finally gave way to a street. She ran on, as though she could leave all her problems behind if she just kept moving. Heh. A moving target. Grief, worry and anger couldn't touch you if they couldn't hit you with their sneaky little sniper bullets.

She didn't know how far or for how long she ran. She finally halted when her aching legs refused to hold her up anymore and her bare skin was numb. She slumped, exhausted, under a streetlamp. It cast a yellow circle around her, like a little island of light against the gloom. All Mai's feelings of isolation slammed into her like they'd been sprinting to keep up. She curled her knees into her chest. No point in letting the world see her cry.

She realised with surprise that this was the first time she'd cried since her parents were killed.

Not just died. Were killed. By an accident, yeah, but they'd still been killed. The words cut deep, but it was like lancing a boil that had grown too large and painful to bear. Hurt poured out, and Mai emptied herself of her inexpressible grief. She cried and cried, until she couldn't cry anymore. Then she just listened to her own hitched breathing and the patter of raindrops on concrete.

Or … not concrete. The pitch had changed. It was also coming from above her head, not around her on the floor anymore.

"Hey!"

She looked up to see a boy in faded blue pyjamas. The pyjamas were too small, leaving great deal of pale ankle on show. He had pulled a fleece over the shirt, though it hung open thanks to a broken zipper. He was also holding an umbrella over her. Mai blinked, but he didn't disappear.

"Did you escape from the funny farm or something?" he demanded.

"What?" she asked stupidly.

"Are you _nuts_?"

"… No."

"You must be, 'cause no sane person would be out in this rain in just their skivvies."

Mai frowned, finally engaging her brain. It kicked in with a grinding of gears. "_You_ are."

"Yeah, but I've got an umbrella. You've got jack shit, and Jack already left town."

She frowned at him. Cursing was vulgar and common. She'd always been taught that to act common was worse than being nobody at all. Who was this kid to say things like that to her? Nobody, that's who. She injected as much dismissiveness as she could into her voice. "Shut up."

"Says the stupid girl crying in the rain." The boy wiped his nose on his sleeve. Even though he was pretty short he had a gangly look about him; or maybe that was just the pyjamas. Besides his ankles, when he reached up to pop back one of the umbrella's broken prongs the top rode up to show a lot of pale tummy. The help at the mansion wouldn't have even used those rags to wash the cars, and as for that horrible fleece, it was probably crawling with germs. "Did you run away from home or something?" he asked.

"I … yes."

He nodded. "I did that once. Social services brought me back. They'll probably take you back, too."

She hugged her knees tighter, unmindful of the cold concrete under her bottom. "I won't let them. There's no place for me there anymore."

"Yeah, right. Heard that one before."

"My parents are dead," she said bitterly. "Nobody wants me around anymore. They just want the money."

"Wow. Sucks to be you." The boy's tone held no sympathy. He sounded disgusted, as if he couldn't believed he'd come outside to help someone like her. "So you're some poor little rich girl running away from home."

"Get lost."

He sighed. "Can't do that."

"Why not?"

"'Cause I'm a guy."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Guys are supposed to protect girls. Like you," he added, as if she needed reminding.

"I know I'm a girl." Mai turned away. "But I can take care of myself. Leave me alone."

He didn't go. Instead, he made an irritated noise and sat down beside her. "He is _so_ gonna skin me alive if he wakes up. I had to leave the apartment door on the latch so I can get back in. He'll probably stay asleep, but …" He stared speculatively at the streetlamp. It wasn't bright enough to blind. It was barely bright enough to catch moths' attention. "I hate the rain." He gave another gloopy sniff. "Just sayin'."

"I'm not asking you to stay."

"Not in words."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nuthin'."

Mai stared at him. "Who _are _you?"

"I'm Katsuya. Who're you?"

"None of your beeswax."

"Is so. I'm getting pissed on because of you. Least you can do is tell me who the hell you are."

"Stop cussing so much. You're too young to be cussing." He had to be a few years her junior, at least, though he spoke like someone far older.

"You're giving me good reason to cuss. I'm freezing, and wet, and probably risking being murdered by some psycho with a crowbar, and you won't even tell me your freaking _name_."

Mai turned away again, but eventually answered, "Mai." He hadn't given her his last name, so she saw no reason to share her own.

"You're a pain in the butt, Mai."

"And you're a creepy guy who watches girls from his bedroom window."

"Now there's gratitude for you." He paused. "So … you really ran away from home?"

"Yes."

"Hmmf. Do they hit you there?"

"No."

"Starve you?"

"No."

"Get you up in the middle of the night to help them undress for bed because they're too drunk to do it themselves?"

"No."

He looked uncomfortable. "Do they make you do … other stuff?"

For a second she didn't know what he meant. Then she realised. She was aghast. "_No_!"

Relief lit the boy's face, followed by exasperation. "Then what the hell you got to complain about? Did they separate you from your brothers and sisters?"

"I don't have any brothers or sisters."

"Man, and you ran away from a cushy number like that?"

Mai scowled. He didn't understand a _thing_.She realised she must've spoken aloud when he shot her a dirty look.

"I understand enough to know you're an idiot."

"Buzz off, pipsqueak." It was the worst name she could bring herself to say.

He didn't buzz off. He huddled closer, as if trying to warm her. Or maybe warm himself. She realised she was shivering and so was he, with his bare belly and her bare feet. Yup, pneumonia. Sure to be. She twisted away when he sneezed. He wore a bobble hat that had obviously seen better days; probably better decades. It looked ridiculous, not to mention sodden.

"Go back inside before you catch your death," Mai mumbled.

"I already told you; I can't do that."

"Because you're being my _hero_?" she sneered.

"Proves someone cares, doesn't it?"

"You don't even _know_ me."

"I have to know you to care whether you get stabbed to death?"

"You're weird." Her volume dropped. She muttered, "Nobody cares what happens to me, as long as they get their money. They'd probably like it if I died. Then there'd be nobody else demanding a share."

"Poor little rich girl." The boy sneezed again. The umbrella briefly moved aside, spattering them both with rain. The side with the broken prong had almost completely collapsed. "Damn it! This ain't working. There's nuthin' else for it. You gotta come home with me."

Mai wondered if she'd heard right. "_Excuse_ me?"

"You heard. Get up, rich girl. This way." He yanked at her arm and shoved her along in front of him. He was surprisingly strong for someone so skinny. Mai tried to resist, but found iron in those thin limbs.

He hustled her up the metal stairs of a nearby apartment building and along the litter-strewn walkway. She stepped over a hypodermic missing its needle and an open, clearly used diaper. Her feet skittered around them, which he took as more resistance.

"Quit struggling, will ya? If you wake the neighbours I'll really catch it."

"Let go of me! Let me go!"

"I ain't kidnapping you. Ouch!" The boy held his cheek where the back of her hand had caught him. The umbrella rolled in a little half-circle behind him. Water collected in it as soon as it came to a stop. His expression switched to one of open anger. "Where the hell are you even running away _to_? Do you have a plan? Someplace to sleep tonight? Or were you just gonna camp out under that streetlight and hope you didn't die of hypothermia or _drowning_?"

"Pneumonia."

"What?"

It had just slipped out. Mai felt foolish for several reasons, not least of which was her lack of even one answer to his questions. They were sensible questions, too, which only made it worse. She ducked her head. "Nothing."

He stared at her. "Weirdo."

Abruptly she stopped struggling and allowed herself to be manoeuvred inside an apartment. Did it even matter who it belonged to? Criminal or good Samaritan, it was all one and the same when you got right down to it. Nobody would care if she disappeared. They'd probably be _glad_. Wasn't that why she'd run away – because there wasn't any place for her in her own home anymore? Her old life was gone and the one poised to replace it was squeezing her out before it even got started. This might solve everybody's problems in one fell swoop.

It was warm inside the apartment, if a little smelly. Despite the whiff of old socks and older food, it was a welcome change from outside. The place was mostly dark, but Mai could make out discarded clothes, plates, and other things. Somebody had tried to clean up, but their version of cleaning up was to shove everything into garbage bags. One had split like an overfull stomach. Both it and its contents glittered in the pale light through the kitchenette window. There were a lot of old instant ramen packets and the curve of glass bottles.

Katsuya guided Mai past the worst, shoved a few things aside on the couch and pushed her onto it. She plopped into place like the last piece of a jigsaw, wedged tight between the armrest and a pile of old magazines. They were sticky and smelled funny. Despite the futility, given her condition, she tried not to rub up against them.

For the first time Katsuya showed something other than irritation. His eyes darted around, taking in their surroundings and obviously wondering what she made of them. "It … it doesn't always look like this," he said unconvincingly.

Mai followed his gaze. She hoped he didn't think she believed him.

"We're just … spring-cleaning …" He cleared his throat and crept over a pile of unidentifiable fabric, which he picked at and sniffed before thrusting something at her. "Here." At her perplexed look he added, "It's a blanket." His voice hadn't risen above a whisper since they came in. His eyes kept going to the door on the far wall. Mai guessed that was a bedroom. The dull whirr of snoring clued her in.

"Thank you," she whispered back, taking the blanket. It smelled a bit, but not too badly compared to the rest of the apartment. It was warm and dry, which were the main things. She hesitated and then wrapped it around her shoulders, drawing it close. It wasn't very thick. Spots soon appeared where her own clothes wet it through.

"Damn it," Katsuya grumbled. He disappeared into the kitchenette and returned bearing two tea-towels that looked like they'd never been used for their actual purpose. "Here. Are you, um, hungry?"

Mai accepted the towels but shook her head to his question. She used them for a hair-turban, flipping her head back despite the lack of room.

"How do girls _do _that?" Katsuya murmured.

There didn't seem any appropriate response to that, so she simply sat there, wondering what to do next. After so long of letting things happen to her, the sudden bout of wresting back control of her life had confused her. She felt adrift, even more than before it happened. Never had the phrase 'at a loose end' been more appropriate, though Mai couldn't help thinking that most people cut off loose and trailing threads so the rest of the garment wasn't ruined.

_Talk about feeling sorry for yourself_, needled a voice in the very back of her mind. _Would you like some swooning, corsets and rolling heaths to go with that self-pity?_

Katsuya sneezed. It snapped her back to the present. "You should change into some dry clothes," she said.

"I guess." He absently dragged the sopping hat from his head.

Mai stifled a gasp. Katsuya stared at her, sudden realisation dawning behind his eyes. He said a word she had only ever heard whispered before, half-raising a hand as if to cover his scalp. He dropped it again when he realised it was useless. She had already seen the livid cut, surgical stitches holding the two sides together. His head had been shaved and what stubble remained did nothing to conceal the injury far back on his scalp.

Mai's last tutor had taught her History, amongst other things, and been really big on 'primary source material', which basically meant looking at old photos and relics directly from each era they studied. He was also invested in gothic things and somewhat irresponsible when it came to letting that seep into his work. Mai had seen pictures of terrible things, which she was reminded of as she looked at Katsuya's wound. Cinema made a big deal of Native Americans who scalped their enemies, but they weren't the only ones, or even the most common: Visigoths, Scythians, Anglo-Saxons, Franks, the list went on and on. Katsuya looked like he'd had a run-in with one of those ancient tribes and they'd half performed the job on him before modern doctors swooped in to repair the damage.

"I fell down the stairs outside when I was rushing. I was late for, um, school. Whacked my head off the bottom step. They're metal and concrete. Well, you saw when you came in. In a fight, metal and concrete win out over bone every time, yeah?" Katsuya wouldn't meet her eyes and spoke very fast.

Was he kidding? Did he really expect her to believe that?

He disappeared into a pile of rubbish, straightening up with a dry baseball cap, which he jammed on his head. The bill cast his face in shadows that turned his eyes into even darker hollows, making him look even more like a survivor from a concentration camp. When he turned back to Mai she couldn't read his expression, but the overall effect made her shiver.

"Shit, you're cold," he said. "I'll get you something dry to wear. You can change in the bathroom, or something."

When he'd finished sorting through another pile of things Mai stared at his offering – a man's tee-shirt, boy's sweatpants and a tracksuit top with a food-stain that made the zipper crunch. She resisted the shudder that gripped the top of her spine and tried to shake her like a terrier with a rat.

This was how the other half lived. This was what people wore when they didn't have money; when they couldn't just toss their clothes into a laundry basket and know the maid would collect them. This was the kind of debris you got when you didn't have a housekeeper. It was her first direct exposure to a life so different than her own. Her aunts and uncles complained all the time about money, but she'd never really considered what life was like below the breadline. It was too far outside her frame of reference. This was how her parents had grown up. No wonder they'd worked so hard to better themselves – and no wonder they'd been so aggrieved when their brothers, sisters and in-laws thought it their right to receive money without even trying to do the same themselves. How could anybody be content to live like this?

"Just be real quiet," Katsuya said as he opened the bathroom door, although in truth the name was misleading. The bath_room_ was barely a room at all. It was more of a cupboard stuffed with toilet, tiny shower, and a cracked sink. Patterns of black mould painted the walls, visible even though Katsuya didn't put on the light. "Do you need anything, ah, y'know … girly?" he asked awkwardly. The world of tampons, make-up and other feminine necessities was not his.

His discomfort just hammered home how abnormal this entire situation was for both of them. Mai had run away from home and her saviour probably still believed in cooties.

"Why are you being so nice to me?" she asked, holding the horrible clothes against her chest and fiddling with the zipper. Bits of orange that could once have been sauce flaked off.

"I told you –"

"Nobody does anything for nothing. What do you want in return?"

Katsuya stared at her. "Geez. Rich people." Then he shut the door, easing the last inch so the click was barely audible. "There's a lock on your side. You have to jiggle it, but it works."

Mai stared at it, then down at her feet. A kernel of something hot and embarrassed stirred in the middle of her self pity, like the blue part at the centre of a flame. Was it shame? Why should she feel ashamed? She'd only said the truth – selflessness was a lie. There was no such thing as a free lunch. Her aunts and uncles had borne out this truth from the moment they arrived.

Mai refused to feel ashamed for being clued up about how the world worked. She wondered what this sort-of rescue would cost her. It had been stupid, allowing a stranger to bring her into his home, even if he was just a kid. Okay, so maybe she hadn't had a plan when she left the estate, or anywhere to go, or even any real idea what to do next, but the true stupidity of what she'd done only now hit her. She was alone, on someone else's turf, at their mercy, and nobody knew where she was. They probably didn't even know she'd gone. Or care.

She bit her lip. _Shut up, brain. I can deal with this. Time to start looking out for myself. I can deal with one skinny boy if he tries anything. Look out for number one from now on, because nobody else is going to, and if they do, it'll only be because they want something. You can't even trust your own family, so why should you trust some stranger who probably has his own agenda too? Look out for yourself. Just look out for yourself and the rest will fall into place. You can take care of yourself. You __**can**__._

It wasn't the world's greatest pep talk, but it would have to do. Mai pulled on the dry clothes, rubbed her hair with the turban-towel, and emerged from the bathroom trying to keep the blonde mess off her face without a hairbrush. She ended up slicking it back with water from a faucet, so it clung to her skull like a swimmer or one of those ballroom dancers you sometimes saw on TV. They probably used a pound of gel to achieve the same effect.

Katsuya was nowhere to be seen. Mai crept out, picking her way over a pile of garbage. She nearly screamed when something touched her shoulder. Her reaction was instinctive: she threw out a hand to slap away the person behind her. Katsuya caught it easily; maybe a little too easily. There was no time to think about his reflexes, however, as he held the index finger of his other hand to his lips.

"Shhh!"

"You scared me!" Mai hissed back.

"Sorry." He at least looked a little contrite – weird, if either of them had stopped to think about it, since she'd pretty much just tried to smack him in his own home. "I'm used to moving around this place pretty quietly."

Mai looked at the debris. Moving through _that_ quietly was impressive. Moving through it silently was astonishing. She briefly wondered what could have prompted him to learn such a skill, but was quickly distracted.

"Here," Katsuya said, thrusting a pair of socks and faded pink Barbie slippers at her. They were too small, like they belonged to a very young girl. Mai couldn't imagine Katsuya wearing them, but there wasn't much evidence of _any_ girl living here, young or old. She accepted them because her feet were cold, pulling them on and feeling odd about wearing this unknown girl's things.

"Thanks."

"You can sleep in my bed."

"You're kidding, right?"

"I'll sleep on the floor. Don't worry, you're safe with me. I won't try nuthin'."

"I don't even _know_ you!"

"You keep saying that."

"Because it's true."

"You know my name – and where I live."

"Like that helps."

"I'll tell you who I am," he said with irritation. "I'm the guy who just rescued your ass from the street and offered you a bed for the night. In the movies that usually means, y'know, gratitude and junk. At least a 'thank you'. You're acting like _I'm_ the one out to get you, when I'm the one trying to _stop_ all the whack-jobs and nutballs from –" He stopped suddenly. His eyes widened with panic.

Mai whipped her head around, but it wasn't anything he'd seen that had made him stop. The cadence of the snores from the other bedroom had altered. They both froze as they waited for the sleeper to fall back into the steady rhythm of before. Katsuya looked visibly relieved. He didn't go as far as a 'Phew!' or wiping sweat from his forehead, but he might as well have. Suddenly Mai really _was_ worried about being here, but not for the same reason as before.

"Who is that?"

Katsuya hesitated before admitting, "My old man."

"Your father?"

"Sure." He shrugged, as if to say 'why not?' which seemed an odd reply.

Mai glanced at the door with renewed suspicion. "You're frightened of him?" That head wound suddenly seem more explicable.

"Let's just say he wouldn't take kindly to finding out I'd snuck a girl into the apartment."

"He wouldn't think –?"

"Nah. Leastways, I don't think so." Katsuya seemed troubled, but shook off the expression. "More like he'd be pissed at having an extra body cluttering up the place at breakfast, eating our food and using our shit." He met Mai's eyes. "Sorry, _stuff_."

His cussing didn't seem so bad anymore. "I think I should leave."

"And go where?"

He had a point. Mai didn't have an answer. Rain still streaked the windows, and her relatives were still at home. "I can't stay here."

"Sure you can. You can hide out until morning. He'll go to work. Then we can figure out what to do next. If you really don't wanna go home you can't go to the police or nuthin'." Katsuya pulled a face. "The cops ain't no use anyhow. They hate coming into this part of town. They think every kid in a hoodie is a thief or carrying concealed."

Mai hunched in on herself.

"They're not!" Katsuya hastened to reassure her. "Or … most of them ain't, anyhow. I'd never … I mean, it's only the high-school jerk-offs who … um … ah shit." He scratched absently under his cap. "_Do_ you wanna go to the authorities?"

Mai thought about it. "I don't …" She stopped.

"Think so?" Katsuya suggested.

"I don't _know_," she finished. The urge to sit on the floor and cry like a baby rose inside her like an undertow she'd accidentally swum into while trying to prove she could tackle the open ocean as well as the shallows. Her voice came out thick, like she had a cold. Her nose prickled like she had a cold as well. "I don't know _anything_."

Panic returned to Katsuya's face, but of a different type this time. "Ah, shit. I think … I guess we have tissues … someplace…" He cast about helplessly. "Quit crying, will ya? Crying's too noisy. Let's just get into my room and figure the rest out where it's saf – uh, more private."

Mai caught the slip-up, but she was past caring. She felt unbearably disoriented – knock-you-off-your-feet-and-kick-you-while-you're-down bewildered. At a complete loss. A tangled mess of confusion and panic.

And sadness. Most of all she felt so _sad_.

It was like all the grief over her parents had lingered on the road where they died, until finally it tired of waiting, and had finally followed her scent to this unknown part of town, slipped under the door of this shabby apartment, crept along the floor, and pounced. The rush of sorrow was like an iron weight on her chest. The lump in her throat was so big they'd have to draw it in the next time they revised the atlas. She could barely breathe. Fear at what she'd done, at the choices she'd made, and at the possible futures in store for her – _all_ possible futures – scrubbed out her lungs like lye and left them feeling just as raw. What choices did she actually _have_? Where _could _she go? What _could _she do? She had nothing and nobody except her family. Running away had been a snap decision, and a childish one. What had she been thinking?

Answer: she hadn't. She had just been _feeling_.

"Wh-wh-wh …"

"Breathe!" Katsuya hissed. "For fuck's sake, _breathe_ before you pass out!"

She swallowed. "Wh-where am I?"

"Huh?"

"I just ran … I don't even know … where I am right now. Wh-where am I?"

"Um, downtown? In Domino City? Hey, are you … do you want … um … oh hell. Please," Katsuya insisted. "Can't you just _stop crying_?"

But Mai couldn't stop. It was as if someone else had taken control and had decided to flush out all her pent-up emotions. She covered her mouth and nose with her hands, but that just made her sobs even louder to her own ears. She shut her eyes, trying to force her traitorous body to stop. Water beaded along her lashes.

"I always thought it w-was dumb, i-in movies. The part where the k-kid blubs and s-says about … about never saying … about never telling the people she loves that … that she … cheesy as hell, b-but … but it's not. It's … it's …" She shook her head. "I thought I didn't care about them. And then they died. And I figured out I _do_ care; only it's too late now. Now I really am on my own, and … and I don't want … I can't …" She stuttered to a halt, the fierce pride she'd spent so long nurturing preventing her from admitting that kind of weakness. Getting so far had been like pulling teeth. If she hadn't been in the middle of a major meltdown, maybe she wouldn't have even admitted this much. Her mind and stomach rebelled when she tried to continue.

Something heavy closed around her – not mental or emotional, but physical. Mai fought, but froze when she realised what was going on. She was _being hugged_. Hugged. _Her_. Nobody in her family did the whole hugging thing. It would crimp up her mother's suits or take time away from her father's phone-calls. Mai had long since outgrown wanting hugs, which was just as well, since hugging her aunts or uncles would be like hugging a porcupine after it took a dip in a lake of toxic waste.

This hug was tentative and a little iffy. It smelled of body odour, unwashed clothes and drying rainwater. This strange boy with the brown eyes and jack-up pyjamas, who had shown her such inexplicable compassion, was hugging her like he had any right to do so. He didn't, but somehow that made Mai even more grateful. He didn't know her. He didn't _have _to comfort her, but he had anyway. He'd seen her pain and reacted to it, which was more than anyone else had done for her lately.

Nobody had allowed Mai to grieve. They'd been so busy writing her off as a difficult child, or an obstacle in the way of their own comfort. Mai, fighting, as she had always done, not to show any weakness, or to let them know they were getting to her, had forgotten they were supposed to be the responsible adults looking out for her wellbeing. The fact the world had forgotten she was a kid wasn't as surprising as the fact it had ever acknowledged it in the first place.

Orphan.

She rolled the word around inside her head. It made her sound like some pathetic character from an old-fashioned novel. Orphans were weak, whimpery things who shivered and waited for someone to come rescue them. Mai had never been like that. She could take care of herself.

So … why was she whimpering and shivering in the arms of a total stranger?

"I lost my little sister," Katsuya murmured. Mai focused on the words, latching onto them as something else to concentrate on. Maybe then she'd forget to cry – like when you have hiccups and only realise after you've stopped that your chest no longer hurts. "And my mom. One minute they were there, the next – poof."

"Th-they d-died?"

He hesitated. "They're gone." He hesitated again before saying, "Sometimes I think maybe, if I'd told my mom I loved her more often, she'd still be around. Like maybe, y'know, if the universe or whatever had realised how much they both meant to me, it wouldn't have taken them away. Maybe it thought I didn't care enough. Or maybe I was a bad kid once too often and that was my punishment or some shit like that. I had this whole hero worship thing for my dad going on at the time. I used to follow him around, tried to be like him – walk like him, talk like him, even tried to think like him. I wanted to dress like him. I only ate the cereal he liked. I tried his aftershave once; nearly burned off my freaking face." Katsuya shrugged, but since he was still holding Mai it didn't work so well. "I sound totally clueless, but what I'm trying to say is … well, I get what you mean. I do get it. About, y'know, not saying stuff until it's too late."

"Y-You do?"

"_Fuck_ yes. That's why I try so hard with my dad now. Most people would give up on … all this, but he's … he's a good guy. He always took care of me before. I can't forget that, and I can't ever give up on … we got a lotta history, y'know? And since my mom … well, he's all I've got. I gotta make sure the universe knows that this time."

Mai sniffed, her chin pillowed on his shoulder and her cheek pressed against his ear. Nobody had been this close to her in a long time. Nobody ever touched her. It was like she was some sort of leper – like grief was a disease you could catch by getting too close. That didn't seem to bother Katsuya. Mai tried her best to understand him – and still drew a blank.

"You're a weird kid," she said.

"There's gratitude for you."

"No, I mean … you don't much act like a kid."

"Look who's talking."

She fell silent. It lasted a long moment. "Thanks."

"S'okay. At least you stopped crying now. You were making my ears bleed."

"You didn't have to do all this for me. You don't –"

"Even know you. Yeah, I got that memo. Look, honestly? I don't know why I'm doing all this. I just looked out the window. The rest kinda happened on its own. I couldn't leave you out there in the rain without an umbrella, and then I couldn't leave you outside at all, and then … Look, don't get the wrong idea about me. I'm not some whiny-ass sucker who goes mushy for every sob story he hears. I can take care of myself. I'm tough."

Mai stared at him.

"I _am_," he insisted, the hint of a whine in his voice. "You don't even _know_ how many asses I've kicked. They tossed me outta two schools already. No other kid will cross me. They don't even want to hang out with me. Know why? 'Cause I'm one scary -" He finished with a word that made Mai blink as if hit in the face with a blast of heated air.

She was starting to realise why he'd helped her, and was continuing to help her.

"You really _are _a weird kid."

He scowled. "Screw you, rich girl. You don't even know me." He paused. A reluctant half-smile curled the corner of his lips. "Damn."

Mai felt her own mouth beginning to curve. Despite the tears still drying on her cheeks, and the dampness of her hair reminding her of her situation (as if the apartment wasn't enough), she liked this weird boy who could make her smile and forget she was totally screwed.

Which was, of course, exactly the reason why Katsuya's eyes suddenly went wide as saucers, and Mai felt a hand come down hard on her shoulder. A big, heavy, _adult_ hand.

"Wha' the fug is goin' on 'ere?" slurred a sleepy voice. It was so deep Mai felt it vibrate through the soles of her feet. The hand tightened on her shoulder. "Who're you? I dunno you. You break inta my 'partment? Punk-ass kids, always tranna steal –"

"Pop, no!" Katsuya darted around Mai to the man towering over her. Caught up in their own situation, neither of them had noticed the bedroom door open, or Katsuya's father skulk out. Moving silently through piles of easily disturbed rubbish was a family talent, it seemed.

"Wha?" the man said, not yet fully awake; or perhaps there was more to it. His hand smelled sour, like the whisky Mai's father used to drink at parties, or after a long day at the office. "Quit pesterin' me, boy."

"She didn't break in, Pop," Katsuya insisted. "I brought her here."

"You _what_?"

"She was outside and … and it was raining …" Katsuya stuttered. Mai didn't know what he could see on his father's face, but apparently it wasn't good.

The hand clenched her shoulder so hard that she cried out.

"Pop, stop! You're hurting her."

"Do more n' that," came the mumbled response, more lucid now, but no less frightening. "You know I got work in the morning; you know the rules 'bout bringing people back to the apartment, but you still snuck inside this -" Mai found herself shaken like a ragdoll. "- this little _whore_."

"No, Pop, you got it all wrong –"

"Thought I didn't have to worry about that sorta thing for a good few years yet. Thought you were just a kid still. Stupid punk-ass little shitkicker."

Terror paralysed Mai.

"Please, Pop, calm down. Just calm –" The meaty thwack of skin hitting skin cut off Katsuya's words. Mai saw him pirouette to the floor. He landed on a bag of garbage, which split and spewed its contents like the world's worst piñata.

The sight motivated her out of her stupor. She yanked her shoulder out of his father's grip. When he wouldn't let go she twisted to sink her teeth into his arm. The angle was uncomfortable, and when he jerked it sent her into another pile of junk.

Katsuya was levering himself onto his forearms, old ramen noodles dangling off the front of his cap. He caught Mai's eye, glanced at his howling father, and said, "Go!"

"But –"

"Are you stupid? Run, you dumb rich girl. You got no idea what you just did."

Katsuya's father bubbled with rage. Words frothed from his mouth, each angrier than the last. He swore at his son, at Mai, at the state of the apartment, at his goddamn wife and useless goddamn daughter for not being around to clean up the place, and not being there to keep that damn son of his in line, and how he'd teach this little punk-ass thieving kid a lesson at least … it went on, but Mai had heard enough to be terrified. She was already scrambling to her feet.

She tried to grab Katsuya's arm to take him with her, but he pushed her away. "Just go!"

"But he –"

"I can deal with him. Been doing it long enough. I can talk him down, get him settled again. It's a – a knack. He needs to sleep. He'll be fine if he just gets some sleep." Katsuya's face was grim. "But not if you're here. Sorry I can't figure out what your next move should be after all, rich girl." He bit his lip and blurted, "Actually, go home. Make that your next move. Go home and stick it out. It may not be perfect, but it's better than –"

A particularly heinous cuss cut the air.

"Family is family," Katsuya said truculently.

Mai had her doubts about the sanity of that statement; especially since _his_ family was reaching for her again.

"C'mere, you!"

"Pop!" Katsuya got between them. "Pop, no! Your AA sponsor said –"

"Move you lousy little –"

Katsuya shoved Mai. "_Go_!"

Later, Mai would wish she hadn't listened. She'd wish she'd stayed, even if she didn't know what she could've done. Katsuya's father was a bear of a man, but Katsuya had said he could deal with him. He had the knack, he'd said. He'd already proved he was more mature than he appeared. Part of her would try to rationalise her actions. The rest would look back at the moment she turned and bolted from that apartment, shove a fresh hypodermic of guilt into her heart and push the plunger.

She ran blind again. It was still raining, though not so hard. She helter-skeltered down the metal and concrete stairs and skidded down the street. The borrowed Barbie slippers were sodden in seconds, but were still better than running in bare feet. Images of the looming, swearing figure dogged her. She kept looking over her shoulder, but nobody followed. She dashed down streets she didn't know. Panic made her keep going, until finally, exhausted beyond measure, she crumpled onto a set of steps and stared at her unfamiliar surroundings.

_Where am I __**now**__?_

It wasn't a residential area. Before her stretched a quad of some sort. The stone staircase under her was flanked by statues and pillars. Rain and the lateness of the hour had emptied the area of all people save two - herself and the lone man in blue coming towards her.

"Are you all right, young lady?" asked the police officer.

Mai stared at him. What a stupid question. Was she _all right_?

"Are you lost?"

"Yes." But that was the least of her problems.

"Sweetheart, do you need some help?"

She had never asked for help in her life.

"… Yes." Feeling defeated, Mai started to cry again. Her feet ached, her head hurt, her throat was raw and she was worn out in all possible ways. She was frightened and sore, and in desperate need of a comforting word or two. Or twelve. Or twelve-hundred. Pride be damned, she _did_ need help.

Typical. She never cried, and now she'd cried twice in the same hour.

"Don't worry, sweetheart. Do you need me to call someone for you? Your mom or dad? Someone else?"

Mai sniffed. "I want my mom," she said brokenly. "And I want my dad. But unless you've got a direct line to the afterlife, I'm not going to get them." She thought of Katsuya's father, of the cut on Katsuya's stubbly head, and of her own parents' disinterest. Maybe they hadn't been the best parents in the world, but suddenly she missed them so hard her stomach cramped. "I want to go home."

_

* * *

_

_To Be Continued …_

* * *

.


	3. Patient

**.**

**

* * *

**

**3. Patient**

* * *

The police officer wasted no time in calling it in. Mai was dimly aware of the bustle her discovery had provoked, but by the time she got to the local Emergency Room, she was sporting a temperature and so tired she could barely keep her eyes open. It was a strange, sluggish kind of tiredness. She felt washed out and hollow, like she'd been throwing up even though she hadn't. In fact, her stomach rumbled. The officer who had brought her to the hospital gave her some packaged onigiri from the cafeteria. Her limbs felt heavier than normal. The officer kept asking if she needed another blanket, and exchanged urgent words with a harassed-looking doctor.

"… hasn't said much of anything," Mai heard. "… might be an abduction case … runaway in that get-up implies several unsavoury situations … make sure you get a rape kit on her …"

The doctor scowled at the officer. "I know how to do my job without you giving me pointers." Her voice was sharp, but softened when she came over to Mai. "Okay, honey, my name is Doctor Tavi."

Mai blinked at her, slow to process each thought. "Dr Tavi?"

"Unfortunately, yes. My parents were English lecturers with a strange sense of humour. My first name is Riki, and my middle name is Tiki. Do you know why that's cruel?"

Mai did. There had always been _au pairs_ around the mansion, and several of her home tutors, governesses and nannies had been English with a love of what they called 'classical education'. As a result she'd read far more and a wider range of authors than most of her peers, and was fluent in Japanese, English and French, with a smattering of Spanish and Italian. The original Riki Tiki Tavi was both a character and a short story by Rudyard Kipling, about the adventures of a valiant mongoose. Dr Tavi didn't look much like a mongoose, but her eyes twinkled with good humour at the joke of her name. Mai found her own mouth twitching to mirror hers.

"There we are. A smile. Now can you tell me your name too?"

She swallowed. "Mai. Mai Yutaka. I'm … I wasn't …" She struggled to get the words out. "Nobody touched me," she said at last. "Not the way that policeman thinks."

"Be that as it may, it's standard procedure for us to check you over, honey. Nothing to worry about. You don't even have to tell me what you were doing on the museum steps so late, if you don't want to yet. All in good time."

Mai blinked again. Her brain seemed to have stalled. "There was … I was …" Doctor Tavi looked expectant, despite her reassurances. "There was … a boy."

Doctor Tavi sighed.

"Not like that!" Mai was quick to protest. "He was … his dad was … the boy looked after me, but his dad woke up, and I got scared and ran away, and I think maybe … his dad … hurt him." She squinted at her own memories. It hadn't been very long ago. Why was it hard to remember? She was so _tired_ all of a sudden. The prospect of the tests Doctor Tavi was talking about filled Mai with exhausted dread.

It was an effort to raise her head when Aunt Mimi and Uncle Kai arrived. They had been elected to fetch her – probably by drawing straws. They weren't allowed in at first, since Mai was still in stirrups. Talking about a boy had put Doctor Tavi on alert, despite Mai's protests. She insisted on conducting the full gamut of gynaecological tests, only half of which Mai understood. All of them made her burn with embarrassment. When they were finally over Aunt Mimi and Uncle Kai were allowed to see her.

Mai squinted blearily as the door opened and they entered the small examination room. She recognised her relatives and tried to summon something other than dismay. She did. The only problem was, what she summoned instead was depression.

Aunt Mimi's screech could have shattered diamonds. "We were so _worried_! What on _earth_ were you _thinking_, running _off_ like that? We thought you'd been _stolen_ out of your _bed_ – or _worse_!" She seemed to think shouting every other word made her sound like she actually cared. It just made Mai's head hurt more.

Mai couldn't answer their rapid-fire questions fast enough before they asked more, though she noticed how her aunt's eyes flicked to the police officer in the hall when asking how Mai had left the estate.

"I shall have that groundsman shot," said Uncle Kai, sounding like some old-fashioned country gentleman from one of those fuddy-duddy English movies: used to foxhunting, brandy and buckshot. In actuality he was an unemployed high school dropout who'd been fired from his last six jobs. The façade he was trying to portray for Doctor Tavi's benefit was so ludicrous that Mai wanted to laugh.

An image popped into her head: Uncle Kai in one of those red foxhunting suits you always saw in portraits of English gentlemen. It must have been thinking about Rudyard Kipling that did it. She pictured Uncle Kai like some lord of the manor, as he gave a grand tour of the poky apartment he and Aunt Mimi had lived, argued and thrown food in until coming to live at her family mansion. She bet he wouldn't know the joke of a name like Riki Tiki Tavi.

Her aunt and her uncle stared, aghast, as she tipped sideways on the bed, wracked by sudden uncontrollable giggles.

"What's the _matter_ with her?" Aunt Mimi screeched. "There's _nothing_ funny about _this_!"

"Shock," said Doctor Tavi, bustling past. "Delayed reaction to her ordeal, I'd say. People respond in different ways and at different rates. This is typical; nothing to worry about. Mai, honey, can you hear me?"

Tears sprang to Mai's eyes. She couldn't stop laughing. She nodded, holding her stomach. "I think … I'm gonna … hurl …" And she did. It hurt, since there was nothing to bring up after the onigiri was gone. Dinner seemed a long, long time ago. Another lifetime, in fact.

"Don't worry," said Doctor Tavi. "I've been in this job long enough that projectile vomit doesn't make me want to toss my own cookies. You just keep this container under your face in case you feel like you want to throw up again, okay?"

"You have to find him, in case he hurt him," Mai said abruptly. After the image of Uncle Kai had come one of Katsuya, looking over his shoulder as he told her to run from _his_ poky apartment. There had been food on the walls there, too. All her laughter died, as if her stomach acid had burned it out of her throat. "You have to go back!"

"Go back where, Mai?"

"I … don't know." She couldn't remember the route she'd taken – either to Katsuya's neighbourhood or from it. Everything was a blur, smeared by adrenaline, fear, rain and her own lack of concentration.

_Why_ hadn't she paid more attention? _Why_ had she run away and left him facing down an angry man twice his size? So what if the guy was his father: there had been nothing fatherly about the way he gripped Mai's shoulder and slurred his threats.

"She's … crying," Aunt Mimi said in absolute amazement.

"But she never cries," said Uncle Kai, equally amazed. "Never."

"As I said, she's in shock," Doctor Tavi tossed over her shoulder at them. She didn't sound too impressed. They hadn't come closer than a few feet from their niece, and neither had made any move to touch or comfort her.

"She sounds hysterical." Aunt Mimi and Uncle Kai backed off. Had Mai been up to it, she might have seen the opportunistic gleam in their eyes. "Out of control."

Mai continued to sob, cursing herself for once again making a mistake that she couldn't put right afterward, no matter how much she wanted to.

* * *

Out of control. That was the phrase her aunts and uncles used again when they had her committed to Sunshine House. Mai would spend a long time thinking how inappropriate the description, now she was totally _in _her relatives' control, and the stupidity of the name 'Sunshine House'. With bars on the windows and locks on the doors, the only sunshine allowed in was weak and latticed with shadows.

The sign at the end of the driveway proclaimed it a 'recovery unit for troubled young adults', which was a politically correct way of saying 'containment pen for crazy teenagers'. All the kids there knew it was really a dumping ground. If your parents couldn't cope with you, or you were a special type of embarrassment, and they had enough money to stash you away, you ended up at Sunshine House. They had a brochure, which Mai was presented with even though it was already a fait-accompli.

"You can't send me there!" she protested.

"It's for your own good, dear," simpered Aunt Riko, who had been eyeing the good china from the moment she first laid eyes on it, and now saw it within her grasp. "They'll look after you there."

"You can get the care you really need," Uncle Teki added. He was offhand in the extreme. Clearly he didn't actually care whether she got help or not – whether she _needed_ help or not, or what kind.

He didn't even bother to hide her father's golf clubs when he loaded them into his big white van. She saw him from her bedroom window, but when he looked up and spotted her, he just grinned and _waved_.

"They're professionals," he said of the people at Sunshine House. "They know what they're doing."

_And so do all of you_, Mai thought bitterly.

Rage uncoiled inside her. She had been hoodwinked. They may not have gotten rid of her how they'd planned, but she had provided a new noose for her neck, which they were more than happy to tighten. This way they could ransack her home at their leisure, as long as they paid the exorbitant fees of Sunshine House each month so they could say they were fulfilling their responsibilities of care. Mai would be carefully kept out of the way so she could 'deal with her problems' and they could go wild with her parents' legacy without her there to protest.

"I'm not a nutcase," she protested, resisting the urge to throw the brochure at them.

"It wasn't exactly normal behaviour, running off the way you did," said Auntie Mimi. "Going out into the rain in just your nightdress? And then there's your obsession with that boy."

"Obsession?" Mai echoed.

"Yes, Mai." Aunt Mimi fixed her with the sharp edge of her steeliest stare. "Obsession."

"It's not an obsession! He saved my life!"

"Really, now, you needn't be so overdramatic. Raising your voice really doesn't help your case."

Aunt Mimi hadn't been there. She hadn't seen Katsuya's father, or smelled the desperation in that apartment.

Mai's efforts to find Katsuya had all been futile. Nobody wanted to help her. If it hadn't been for the clothes he gave her, she suspected her aunts and uncles would have accused her of making him up. They didn't give two hoots what had happened to the boy who had helped her – maybe they even resented him for it. When she tried to insist they find him, to make sure he was okay, she heard more uses of the word 'hysterical' and a few uses of 'unmanageable' too. They closed doors on their discussions and closed ranks on her.

Eventually she tried calling the hospital herself to see if someone answering Katsuya's description had been admitted, but Aunt Riko picked up one of the other receivers in the house and made her get off the line. She kept apologising to the man on the other end for her 'disturbed niece' and tore a strip off Mai afterwards.

"What must they think!" she snarled, before schooling her features into a less antagonistic expression. "You mustn't let yourself get preoccupied by something you can't do anything about, Mai. You're safe now, and you have to concentrate on getting better."

"I'm not sick, I just wanted to make sure he was okay. I owe him that much."

"Of course you do." The way Aunt Riko said it made it clear she thought nothing of the sort.

No matter what Mai did, everything was fuel for their plan to get her out of their way. She was damaged goods, and the repairs were to be done at Sunshine House.

"We're doing this to help you, Mai," they all said at some point or other. If they it was to salve their own consciences, she hoped they choked on the words, because they didn't mean anything to her. They were like nails in the coffin of her freedom as she watched the last of her family drive away and abandon her in her new home.

"It may not seem like it now," assured the House Mother, "but they're doing this to help you, dear." They were all called family-type names: House Mother, House Sisters, House Brothers. It was supposed to make the inmates feel more at ease, but since their families were the ones who had put them here, it seemed a pretty dumb move to Mai.

_I don't need this kind of help_, she thought. _I don't need anybody's help. I can take care of myself_.

It was a thought that became a mantra, a mantra that became a promise, and a promise that became a vow. Everybody has something they tell themselves to help them keep going when life gets tough. When she got out of there, Mai resolved, she would never look back and never depend on anybody else ever again. She had to take control of her life again.

She could take care of herself.

_She_ could take care of herself.

She _could_ take care of herself.

She could take care of _herself_.

Her room was like a cell in a convent. The bed was narrow, the windows barricaded. Bedtime was ridiculously early, and every morning a bell clanged before the sun rose. There weren't morning prayers, but there was a morning assembly in the dining room, where the House Mother greeted everyone and made them promise to try their hardest at their various therapies today. She had a smile like a Venus flytrap and eyes sharper than thorns in her rosy-cheeked face. She treated everyone like they were five years old, but nobody said anything about it – to her face, at least. The patients were either zombies or so resentful they had little black clouds above their heads all day.

Mai's roommate was the latter. The very first day, she glared as Mai unpacked her things, still in a daze that this was really happening. "Don't think I'm sharing my wardrobe with all your stuff," the girl snarled. "You've got your own."

Mai looked at her clothes. She hadn't known what to bring, and had ended up bringing mostly things with sentimental value. As a result, a lot of impractical outfits now looked up at her: things her mother had picked out and gifts from her father she'd never actually worn. Her roommate saw them and snorted.

"You won't be able to wear _that_ stuff here. They'll say it's inappropriate, like you're acting out. They'll say everything you do is 'acting out' unless you follow their rules like some sort of Puritan."

"And acting out is bad?"

"Acting out gets your privileges revoked."

"What are the privileges?"

"TV, books, music, outings – you name it, they'll revoke it if you don't do _exactly_ as they say. Some of the therapies are pretty cool, but hardly anyone gets to do the cool stuff. It costs money to bring in people to run the courses and they keep costs down by just not letting anyone _do_ anything and cancelling the session every week. This place is like boot camp with soft furnishings and smiles, except boot camp is probably more merciful."

Mai stared at her suitcase for a further few minutes, and then went back to unpacking. She hung all her vivid dresses on hangars, balled both plain and neon socks, folded her underwear and laid them in the drawers on top of gaudy tops, jeans and a couple of hats she'd grabbed as an afterthought. Her roommate watched enviously, though she made a disgusted noise and pretended to read her copy of _War and Peace_. She had the look of someone who'd bring out the book a million and one times and never read a page. Her eyes stared beadily over the top.

"Stupid peacock. You'll learn. They all do in the end."

The nickname was quickly adopted. Mai almost got used to answering to 'Peacock' instead of her real name. It was better than half the other things she was called: topmost 'You can't do that' and 'I'm sure you know that's not a good idea, dear."

The atmosphere of Sunshine house was stifling. Mai felt herself suffocating in it after a week. She couldn't imagine spending years there, but that was exactly what had happened to half the other kids. She listened to their stories with horror. One by one, they had all been beaten down, and mumbled about reproaches dispensed with smiles and twinkling eyes, of treats they'd worked hard for, only to have them taken away and replaced with platitudes about 'trying harder next time' and 'getting better eventually'. The Brothers and Sisters genuinely thought they were helping with their version of tough love. Cost-cutting didn't even occur to some of them as they blithely went about their duties. The hollow-eyed submission of the other kids made Mai shiver and vow she'd never let anyone make her into a shell like that.

"I can take care of myself," she said each night after lights-out. A lot of residents were medicated, so that was eight o' clock in the evening. Thick black drapes made it night no matter how dark it was outside. Mai stared into the gloom, building her resolve brick by private brick. They wouldn't break her. She wouldn't let them. "I _can_ take care of myself."

"Sure you can," muttered her roommate after the billionth time she said it. "But don't count on it. They'll never let you out of here, y'know. We're embarrassments to our families, remember? They have to sign papers for our release. You reckon _your_ family will willingly take you back?"

"They only have to sign as long as we're still minors."

Her roommate snorted. "Keep telling yourself that. Me? I'm more into realism. Once you're in the system you never get out. You're on record for being stuck in this dump. When you turn legal you'll just be put in an adult version of this dump. From one dump to another, do not pass go, do not collect two-hundred yen. It's like a really crummy tattoo – you never get rid of it, nobody lets you forget it's there, and until the end of your life people will judge you for the stupid stuff you did once, even if you make it to a hundred years old and never get another tatt done."

Mai family would never take her back. She was too well-placed for their tastes. It suited them to know where she was, as long as that was out of their way and without access to her inheritance. They gave her a stipend, which went directly into Sunshine House's coffers. They were then free to spend her parents' money as they liked, able to claim they'd fulfilled their responsibilities. It suited them to have a crazy niece in the nuthouse. They never even came to visit in all the time Mai was there.

"It doesn't matter," she said fiercely. "I can take care of _myself_."

Sometimes she dreamed. The nights she didn't, she knew the Brothers and Sisters had been lax with her medication. Somewhere along the way she'd acquired a reputation for rebelliousness, which had been inflated horribly. She heard rumours of things she'd done, which she knew to be untrue. Rebelliousness not only got your privileges revoked, it was a stain on your record that would count against you when it came to the end of your tenure. Mai needed the hope of getting out of Sunshine House someday. She needed a spotless record to be considered of sound enough mind to sign her own papers when the time came. Like she'd ever bite and kick, or scream the house down, or threaten to kill herself if she didn't get to go find the mysterious Katsuya? The worst she'd ever done was wear clothes the House Mother thought 'too bright and vulgar' and complain in the beginning about them cutting her hair. The haircut made her look like a boy and did nothing for her bone structure.

"It's the same for everyone, dear," the House Mother told her, gesturing to the other girls, who all looked like GI Jane or escapees from a leukaemia ward.

"You're not fighting lice here, are you?" Mai demanded, aghast.

"Of course not, but we find the egoism of individuality somewhat counterproductive when trying to foster a homogenised atmosphere conducive to psychosomatic harmony." The House Mother smiled, knowing Mai wouldn't have understood a word. "Studies we've done all show that synchronisation is the key to a positive collective mindset and a constructive approach to the future."

What she didn't realise was that Mai had been listening to her father blag clients for years, and a degree in smooth talk and management-speak. Her father had used it all to blind clients into thinking he was doing more than they were paying him for, which left his bank account swollen and them feeling smug at having paid less for the best. Mai knew the House Mother was basically saying Sunshine House hated individuality because it made everyone harder to control. She liked having zombies for residents. It made her job easier.

Mai suspected the hand of her aunt and uncles in the rumours. She'd mentioned Katsuya only twice since she arrived – once to the House Mother and once to a psychologist, who had looked at her like she was living in a fantasy world where fairies made dinner and kissed away boo-boos with their magical lipstick. Nonetheless, true or not, the stories provided a good excuse to medicate her and turn her into a Sunshine House zombie as well. She wondered how many other residents really needed their knock-out drugs, and how many were being silenced at their loving families' financial request.

It wasn't like she was abused or mistreated. Nobody ever touched her inappropriately and she wasn't starved or beaten, but with every passing day Mai hated the place more, and with every passing day she became more entrenched in a world that would never let her go. The future stretched before her, repetitive in its hopelessness. She could almost see the red tape spinning around her like a gymnast's ribbon, winding tighter and tighter, until she could barely breathe.

She had to get out. She _had_ to escape. But how, when everything seemed stacked against it – and her?

There was one resident, a boy younger than Mai, who kept trying to escape. They were given onigiri as a snack every day, and every day he would stuff his pockets full before making a break for it, as if anticipating he'd need sustenance on the road to freedom. It became something of a running joke – "Look out, Tonzura's going for it again!" He would invariably be found, scrambling over walls, lurking in laundry carts, hiding in the basement, or even, on one memorable occasion, cowering in the trunk of a car belonging to a visiting family. He would be marched back inside, his privileges revoked and his spirit eroded a little more.

One day he fell out of a window. That was how the story went, anyway. The bars on his room were lodged into concrete, the same as everyone else's, but somehow the concrete itself had worn away until the bottom of a few bars could pop out. Presumably he had been rattling the bars, as some residents did out of frustration, and they had given way under his weight. Mai thought it odd, however, that on this day his pockets were empty even though it was after snack time.

_I have to get out_, she thought fervently. _I can't stay in this place. I have to get __**out**__._

In the end, it didn't matter whether her family would have signed her release papers or not. When she was sixteen, Mai made good on her promise and took care of her own future.

Sunshine House security was impressive, but not impregnable. They had become lazy after her good behaviour for so long, and reliant on the zombie-drugs that kept so many residents docile and biddable. Breaking out was a matter of careful planning and observation, timing, and learning how to survive on fewer calories so she could palm her medicated food and dispose of it later. She wore baggy clothes and learned to apply make-up to disguise her weight-loss, watched the House Mother, and Brothers and Sisters, so she could spot the weak link in their chain. After a spot of luck and being in the right place at the right time, she learned the code to the outside doors three days before they changed it – the day the Sister who monitored the rooms in her wing after lights-out was fighting flu and doped up with cold medicine. When Mai's chance came, and the Sister had dozed off, she took it.

The moment her feet touched down outside the grounds, Mai fled like all the hounds of hell were after her. Depending on how you looked at it, they were.

She avoided Domino City and her treacherous family, knowing they'd only send her back to Sunshine House. After her confinement, all she wanted was freedom. She needed to get away from everything and everyone – needed it like air in her lungs and food in her belly. It wasn't just a desire, it was necessity.

_I don't need my family anyway,_ she thought, huddled on the side of a road, trying to avoid the rain and not catch hypothermia or a bad case of being recognised. Thumbing a lift always looked so easy in the movies. _I'll take care of myself._

Little did she know, her task was just beginning.

_

* * *

_

_To Be Continued …_

* * *

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

* * *

"_Look out, Tonzura's going for it again!" _

-- 'Tonzura' is a direct translation of the verb 'to escape' or 'to flee'.

_There was one resident, a boy younger than Mai, who kept trying to escape … Mai thought it odd, however, that on this day his pockets were empty even though it was after snack time. _

-- Inspired by a snippet in the novel _Rosie Meadows Regrets_ by Catherine Alliott.

* * *

.


	4. Street Kid

**.**

**

* * *

**

4. Street Kid

* * *

Mai had taken her files from the House Mother's office and made good use of her various documents. Shedding tears about 'losing' whatever wasn't there didn't hurt, either. It was amazing what puppy-dog eyes, a twist of the hips and a trembly bottom lip could do for you if you were talking to a male official. Mai quickly learned she looked older than she actually was and used that to her advantage. Not many of those men would have helped her if they'd known she was a minor. Or maybe they would have but the price of their help would have been more than she was willing to pay.

Mai hitched her way to Tangram City, where glitz was just a word and every motel had at least one flickery neon letter. She worked for cash-in-hand at first, cleaning a sub-par Chinese takeaway. The owner, Mr. Wu, had a daughter who had run away from home when her parents' strict upbringing drove her to the brink of insanity. Not that Mai knew this when she first stepped inside and pointed at the 'Help Wanted' sign. She needed to eat and a place to stay, and for both she needed money. Mr. Wu studied her with a critical eye. It was clear he didn't believe her cover story, but neither did he question it.

"You work hard," he said, his accent still heavy even after thirty years in the country. Mai wondered if that was for effect. "You prompt. Be on time. Work full shift now as probation. Then leave and be back prompt next day if do good. No shirk."

"No shirk," Mai agreed. "Thank you so much."

Mr. Wu sniffed. "You not thank me when you finish first time."

He was right. By the end of that first shift she was weary and could barely keep her eyes open. Her hands hurt from scrubbing the big fryers, her back ached from bending to shove the mop across the floor and from loading trays diners couldn't be bothered to tidy themselves when they just got up and left at the end of their meal. Mai remembered many times she had done just that and wondered whether the mansion staff had hated her guts for it. Spoilt little rich girl, they must have thought. She dragged herself out of the door at the end, but paused. She turned back to Mr. Wu's semi-triumphant frown.

"Thanks again, Mr. Wu!" She shot off a little salute and used the last of her energy to give her step a bounce.

"You be prompt tomorrow!" Mr. Wu called after her. "Crazy girl!"

She only made it around the corner before the bounce evaporated. Mai leaned against a wall, fighting back the wave of despair that threatened to consume her.

_Keep it together,_ she thought savagely. _You've made it this far. Don't go to pieces now. You have a job. You have a bit of money._ She gripped the bills tight in her fist. _Now find a place to stay for the night and you're laughing. You can freak out when there's time – which, right now? There __**isn't**__, so __**don't**__. This isn't so bad. It could be worse._

Katsuya's father rose in her mind, as he had in her nightmares for years now. She shook the apparition away. Yes, things could definitely be worse.

She tried many motels, but they were all too expensive, and Tangram City was a stranger to youth hostels. Mai was beginning to despair, thinking she'd have to sleep on the street, when she spotted a crowd of dirty, unwashed teenagers heading in a single direction. Their muttered conversation gave her pause and made her follow.

She found shelter with them in the most bizarre of places: an Internet café. That long-ago night running through the rain on the open street, plus the nights spent dozing in strangers' cars on her way here, were all enough to make her try anything with a working bathroom and half decent security. The café didn't advertise its after-hours services, but Mai tried her luck and her opportunism paid off.

Sleeping upright in a chair would never stop being horrible, but at least she was lucid now. Thanks to her iron self-discipline her grumbling belly also wasn't new or anything she couldn't deal with. The café offered access to live news feeds on the permanently switched on television in the corner, and there were soft drinks and sugar snacks available from vending machines. There was even Internet access if you could afford it – which Mai couldn't, but the click-click-click of those who could was oddly comforting. Better than truck drivers swearing at other drivers, or stray dogs fighting over garbage. There were worse places to end up.

"You been long in the cold?" asked the girl at the terminal next to Mai's. Her eyes were the pale grey of dirty quartz and her hair had been cut into a style the House Mother would have loved. She would have loved the piercings, though. They studded the girl's face and ears, glinting in the blue light from her computer.

Mai shrugged. She'd learned shrugging was a good response when anything you said could get you in trouble. People could read what they wanted into a shrug, and they generally read assent, or at least indifference.

"You got no tongue in your head, girl?"

"Long enough."

"Shit, yo! We can all say that. I'm Tink." She gestured at the tattoo on her upper arm. "Tinkerbell, geddit? What's your handle?"

"My ... handle?"

"Yeah, your handle. Your call. Your moniker. Your _name._"

"Oh. It's Mai," she said without thinking, and then stopped. She cursed herself for giving her real first name. Why bother trying to run away if she was just going to tell every person she met exactly who she was? She could have called herself Peacock, since it was the only nickname she'd ever known, but that was even more incriminating. Plus it just sounded gross. But Mai was a common name. If she could pair it with something other than Yutaka, maybe nobody would notice. She had been missing from the world since she was twelve, after all. "Valentine!" she added in a fit of inspiration. Maybe this girl would think her real name was a phoney if she gave herself a corny add-on. Seriously: _Tinkerbell_?

"_Mai Valentine_? Girl, that is the dumbest, most clichéd name I ever heard." Tink grinned. "Way cool. Wish I'd thought of it."

Mai liked Tink, though she resisted her friendly overtures at first.

"Don't be hating, Mai," Tink warned her, but not unkindly. "World's a cold place. Us guys gotta stick together, right?"

Fierce independence soon gave way to survival instinct. Mai had done the 'fight the person trying to save you' routine a long time ago and it hadn't gone well. Understatement! She wasn't going to make that mistake again. Tink was street-smart. Their conversations gave Mai useful tips on how to get by without showing up on 'the wrong radars'. Tink had been on the streets for two years and boasted she'd never once been picked up by the cops. Mai put her age at about twenty-one, although it was difficult to tell under all the eyeliner and metalwork.

"Make-up might seem like a luxury, but when you want people to take you seriously, you don't want them to guess you don't got nowhere to go home to at night. Always wash, always show up clean, always put your best face on, and never, _never_ forget your hairbrush or your mascara. Keep at least two outfits in your bindle – that's the pack you keep with you if the cops move you on. One outfit to wear and one to wash. Save your coins and use the laundrette. As soon as people figure out you're a street kid, they either lose all interest or they think you're out to murder them and steal their wallet."

Being taken under the wing of someone so much more experienced was a comfort for Mai, even if Tink could be as cruel in her bluntness as she was kind in her actions.

"What the fuck is that, yo? Are those kiddy playing cards?"

Of all the personal items Mai could have brought with her from Sunshine House, she had chosen her Duel Monsters deck. It was hard to explain why without sounding like an idiot. Harpy Lady still stood for everything Mai aspired to be, but Mai couldn't bring herself to take just the one card when she left. The rest of her deck was filled with accessories painstakingly collected for her Harpy. She kept them all in her pocket, in the protective case she'd had since the beginning.

There was no point in trying to hide anything from Tink. "They're Duel Monsters cards."

"Ain't that shit worth money?"

"Some of them. The rarer ones."

"So why are you hanging onto them when you can barely afford to feed yourself, girl?"

Mai couldn't explain, no matter how hard she tried, so she didn't try very hard and ended up shrugging a lot instead. Tink shook her head, but said no more about it. Everyone had their foibles, after all. Who was she to question others' when she was chock full of her own?

One of her major idiosyncrasies was the way she talked. She put on an exaggerated street drawl, but once or twice slipped from it into something more refined. When she caught herself her face flashed with panic, and the accent returned twice as strong. Her attitude was also overly strong, sometimes verging on caricature. Mai got the feeling she was hiding more than just her bare skin under her tattoos and metalwork. The fact she refused to talk about why she was on the street only supported this theory.

"My dad is dead," Tink snapped the one and only time she talked about him. "I ain't got no father no more, and no home neither. No place for me where daddy used to reside. But it don't matter. I can take care of myself, yo."

Hearing her own mantra gave Mai pause to construct a reply. "You sure can," she said eventually.

"Damn skippy!"

It was a blow when Mai returned to the café one night to find Tink's chair had a different occupant. The new girl just turned away and went straight to sleep. Mai spent the evening staring at the screen she actually had money to rent for once. Tink had promised to help her out with some stuff again, but without her there wasn't much point stumping up the cash, so Mai tried to sleep instead.

Tink didn't come back for the rest of the week. Her chair had no fewer than three different renters. Mai started to get worried. Missing one night was one thing. Missing this many was ominous.

"That's just the way it goes sometimes," said the woman at the counter, as she took the fees for another night of shelter from the cold. "If you can't pay, you can't stay. I doubt we've seen the last of Tink, though. She often blows in on the wind when she's in town. Free spirit, that one."

She wasn't so free when Mai read about her on a site about missing kids. She liked to keep an eye out in case 'Mai Yutaka' turned up on one, but this was as much of a body-blow. Tink, she learned, had finally been picked up by the police and returned to her father and his new wife in Hokkaido. Tink – real name Adi – was actually only sixteen herself, but the right connections had given her an older ID and the ability to tattoo herself, live alone, and work in the kinds of places Mai knew good girls never set foot in. Going home robbed her of all that freedom, such as it was. There was only so much freedom to be had in living hand to mouth, but it was better than the abusive confinement she went home to. Tink's father was listed as happy his wayward daughter had returned, but Mai remembered the fizz of anger and anxiety behind Tink's eyes when she'd spat out he was dead. There was more there than the small article knew.

Mai took no satisfaction in being right when that hidden story finally made even the resilient Tink hang herself and get her picture in the news. She was used as a poster child for child abuse and a charity campaigning for raised awareness to combat this insidious problem.

Mai stared at the photograph on the TV, a younger, less aggressive Tink with hair the colour of melted chocolate and a smile Mai had never seen before: open and happy and innocent. Nobody on the street was innocent, or if they were, they didn't stay that way for long.

Mai learned a lot from their brief friendship and kept her head down, working for passage away from anywhere she could be recognised as the crazy missing Yutaka heir and taken home against her will like poor Tink.

After a few weeks and several salient conversations with other homeless kids, Mai Googled and clicked her way to the people who had provided Tink with her fake ID – the task Tink had been primed to help her with before she went missing. Mai saved what remained of her wages after her overheads, purchasing her own new ID with a new age and other misleading details. It meant a fortnight of living on leftovers that Mr. Wu sold cheap at closing, but it was worth it.

"Crazy girl," Mr. Wu sniped, dropping eggrolls onto greaseproof paper in front of her. "You remind me much of my Chen-Chi."

Mai paused before taking a grateful bite. "Chen-Chi?"

He nodded. "My daughter. Long time gone now. She dedicated." He nodded approvingly. "She set her mind to something, it get done, no argument."

Mai thought about this. He rarely talked about his daughter. "Thank you."

He nodded again. Then he looked sad. "She too free for Mrs. Wu. Freethinking, she say. Modern girl, not old and fusty like parents. Free and easy, Mrs. Wu say. Loose. Chen-Chi, she say she not have to take that kind of abuse. She leave. Never look back. Never call. Never –" He stopped, as if he'd said too much. He waved a wrinkled hand at Mai and turned away, back to his beloved business.

Mai suddenly realised how often he was there before her in the mornings, and how he always stayed late, way after closing. Mr. Wu hated to go home to the fabled Mrs. Wu and his missing daughter.

"Mr. Wu?"

"Yes, crazy girl?"

"Do you ... do you miss her?"

He paused in the doorway. "I miss them both," he said eventually, his accent suddenly gone like a chalkboard that had been wiped clean. Then he shook his head. "You know what Chen-Chi mean?"

"Uh, no."

"Bright shining dawn. Good name. People with good name go far. Good name, good luck, good future. You think about that." He gave her a rare smile. "Crazy girl."

She'd thought long and hard about her new name. After her conversation with Mr. Wu, something clicked, and she knew who she was going to be. Gone were Mai Yutaka and Mai Valentine, the orphan rich girl and the street kid, replaced instead by Mai Kujaku. Peacock became the more feminine 'peahen', a bird whose dowdy plumage concealed a razor beak and claws, and more intelligence than most people realised when they saw it next to its gaudy mate. Mai took a grim kind of pleasure whenever she saw the kanji of her new identity.

She had always wanted to see the world. It used to be just so she could use her other languages, but now it had the added allure of her family all being still in Japan and unlikely to go anyplace else. Mai Kujaku could go anywhere she wanted, and was legal for at least minimum wage. Mai Kujaku was destined for better things.

"You no stay here, crazy girl," said Mr. Wu. "This city bad for people like you."

"People like me?"

"People like you and my Chen-Chi. You all meant for better than this dump."

"Tangram City isn't a –"

"It dump. You young. You intelligent. You get out. Stop eating my eggrolls. Make good life for yourself, not sleep in internet cafe every night."

Her breath caught in her throat. he knew about that?

Mr. Wu's small black eyes were hard and soft at the same time. "Get out while still can, crazy girl. Other wise you _really_ crazy."

In retrospect, taking the job on the cruise ship was probably a bad idea, but at the time it seemed not only reasonable, but predestined. Mai saw the advert for assistant cruise reps in the window of a recruitment agency. The recruiter she spoke to inside was harassed and didn't look as closely at her documents as he should have. He passed her details along, and within days Mai was registered in her new job with the Sea of Dreams Cruise Line. It was ludicrously simple to contrive her way out of Japan to France.

"Now maybe I keep eggroll supply stable," said Mr. Wu as his parting shot.

"No kidding. I've seen you wolfing them down when you think I'm not looking."

"Crazy _and_ cheeky. I better off without you," he winked, then frowned and waved her away. "Pah."

When she got on board and saw the bunnie girl outfit, however, she had her first misgivings. Yet Mai just had to think about Tink's entire life being shrunk to a thousand-word news article, the trolley laden with little pots of sedatives at Sunshine House, or Mr. Wu's long workdays, to decide this wasn't so bad. Funny how anything could become acceptable when your liberty was at stake. When she put on the bustier, she looked in the mirror and fluffed her frizzy hair, which was growing back thicker than ever since she'd stopped being forced to have it cut. She looked a little like Harpy Lady, she thought, putting her hands on her hips and arching her back.

_Not bad. Not bad at all._

The outfit seemed to demand a certain type of posturing, with poses Mai would never have struck in her dowdy street clothes, or any of the chic outfits her mother used to pick out. Weirdly, instead of being demeaning, the bunnie outfit made Mai feel more confident. It took her out of herself. You couldn't be shy and retiring in a bunnie costume. She revelled in her new poise. Mai Kujaku could be anything she wanted, after all. Maybe she wanted to be more daring that Mai Yutaka had ever been. Maybe she wanted to be something new and different – someone who pushed boundaries and took chances even in the small-scale stuff.

Yeah. New beginnings. That was the ticket.

_

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_

To Be Continued …

**

* * *

**

**

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**

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

_

* * *

_

Mai hitched her way to Tangram City, where glitz was just a word and every motel had at least one flickery neon letter.

-- A tangram is a type of Chinese puzzle.


	5. Traveller

**A/N****:** All French comes from Babelfish, and so is debateable in its accuracy, but I did my best. I speak only two languages with fluency: English and Bad English.

* * *

**5. Traveller**

* * *

The entire crew was a mixture of Japanese and French, and the passengers came from all over the world. The cruise line sent them to locations both exotic and mundane, so it wasn't unusual to hear a mixture of languages in the halls. Mai's ear for language stood her in good stead. She had learned it was always better to understand more than you let on, and it was amazing how much you got ignored in a bunnie costume.

No, seriously.

"These outfits, they are _trop bien justes_!" One of the other girls looked into the mirror or the changing room, aghast. She had high cheekbones and a model's figure, which didn't suit a leotard at all, especially one with a rabbit's tail. The sheath of black fabric made her look like an ironing board standing on its end with two grapes taped to the front. Her wispy dark hair was in disarray from the way she kept running her hands through it.

Mai mentally translated the girl's words: 'trop bien justes' meant 'too skimpy'. She couldn't disagree. "Je vous pense sembler fabuleux," she said, coming to stand behind the girl. "Très … mignon."

The girl looked shocked at the quality of Mai's French, as well as her sudden appearance behind her. evidently she had been speaking to herself. She recovered quickly, curling her nose at the compliment. "_Mignon_?" she said with horror. "I do not wish to look _cute_. C'est inacceptable! C'est _embarrassant_!" As good as Mai had thought her French, this girl had still pegged her as a non-native, mixing up her own language skills so they conversed in a mishmash.

"Then how would you like to look?" Mai asked.

The girl surveyed the outfit again. She turned around and puffed out her lips, jutting her midsection forward as if pretending to be pregnant, then sucking it back again and curling her shoulders inwards to make her collarbones stick out. Neither pose pleased her. she stood straight again. She had a dancer's bearing, both loose and rigid, like someone was constantly patting the base of her spine to straighten it and telling her to keep her elbows in. "Like I am available for _un mari riche_," she said at last.

Mai boggled. "A rich husband? You're husband-hunting on this cruise?"

"Sweetheart, this is my third year working for this company. I am husband-hunting on every cruise." The girl's smile was vibrant, if sharp. It completely changed her face, turning her from a waiflike model into someone for whom 'beautiful' wasn't a strong enough adjective. It also gave Mai more of an idea of her age: not as young as she'd first thought. "Vous êtes une fille innocente. If you stay long enough, you will learn. Although, to look at you, I do not think your problem will be, ah, to become …" She spiralled her hand. "Le dernier poulet dans le supermarché."

Mai frowned. "The last chicken in the supermarket?"

"I think the phrase to you is more … um …" The girl clicked her fingers to stir her memory. "Oh yes, 'left on the shelf'. I think you will more likely have to discourage men. It is you who looks _fabuleux_ in this … équipement idiot." She curled her lip again, tugging at the hem of one leg. "This is ridiculous. You do not look _mignon_. How do you make _this_ look good? I feel like a character in a children's cartoon."

Mai didn't blush. Her curves had been reduced by living rough for so long, but she wasn't a waif anymore, thanks to a diet of eggrolls and fried rice. Her gently rounding shape _did_ make the outfit look good. "What's your name?" she asked instead.

"Darchelle Gravois. And you are?"

"Mai Kujaku." The name still tasted new and liberating. Mai smiled around it. "I'm Mai Kujaku."

Darchelle surveyed her outfit once more and sighed, sliding her bunnie-ear headband into place. One ear flopped over cutely. "Not right now you're not. Now, sweetheart, you and I are _petits lapins_. Bunnie One and Bunnie Two." She puffed out her cheeks in disgust. "The sooner I find a man to take me away from all this, the better. Come along, new girl." She turned to go and grabbed Mai by her arm. "I will 'show you the ropes' and look after you until you know what you are doing."

"I can take of myself," Mai started, slipping in the old refrain.

"Nonsense." Darchelle was brisk. "It will give me something to concentrate on other than how much these fishnets itch."

* * *

"You mean you do all that math n' stuff _in your head_?"

The Bunnie Girls, as Mai had learned they were called (personnel on this cruise not being known for their originality), generally fell into three categories: blonde, dumb, and dumb-blonde. 'Generally', because she was blonde but razor-sharp, and Darchelle escaped the hellish trio entirely. It had fast become clear why she had fastened herself to Mai when they first met: Bunnie Girls worked together, their cabins were together, and they tended to hang out together on their downtime. There were only so many places to go on a ship like this, especially since a lot of them were only for paying guests. Befriending Mai was the only way Darchelle could be sure her brain didn't melt and run out through her ears like yoghurt left in the heat.

Mai exchanged a glance with Darchelle, who rolled her eyes and went back to ogling the guests. Not that she would call it ogling. Darchelle wouldn't even call it 'checking out the talent', like Tink. Darchelle, as she had said regally on more than one occasion, especially when queried about her man-hunting, had _class_.

"Don't you?" Mai said in reply to the girl who had spoken, a winsome thing with a bee-stung mouth and large blue eyes. Mai had pegged her Giggle-n'-Jiggle, since that seemed to be what had won over the recruitment officer in her case. She could have nothing on her CV except doodles.

Giggle's eyes widened even further at the question. "Nu-uh! They never let me work the tables in the casino. I have to just carry drinks n' snacks n' junk. I suck at numbers."

"You suck at a lot of things," sniped another girl. "And some things you just plain suck."

Giggle blinked in confusion. "What?"

"You know what I mean."

"No I don-… oh, _ewwwww_!"

Darchelle got to her feet. In her own clothes she looked ravishing. She had a sense of style Mai couldn't help admiring. It reminded her of her mother – or rather, of Mai Yutaka's mother. Mai Kujaku had been asked about her family, but she had just shrugged and said they died a long time ago. _All_ of them. Since she was meant to be in her twenties now, it didn't shock people as much as if she'd admitted she'd lost them six years ago, when she was twelve.

"I am going for a walk," Darchelle declared. "Mai?"

"Are you two, like, _together _or something?" asked the sniper girl. "I mean, you_ do_ share quarters and all."

"Contrary to what you think, ma petite pile des cerveau-cellules gaspillées, not everything revolves around sexual gratification. Mai and I are _jumeaux spirituels_."

"Say what?"

"Spiritual twins."

"Oh, so you're not gay, you're just _New Agers_," Sniper sneered. She said it as one might say 'dog turds' or 'tax inspectors'.

Mai snorted, not at the girl's expression, but at the fact she hadn't realised Darchelle had called her a pile of wasted brain-cells. The level of bitchiness in an all-female atmosphere like this was astounding.

Darchelle smiled brilliantly. "Shall we?"

Mai took her arm, part of her revelling in the looks the other girls gave them. She'd found she actually _enjoyed _a bit of exhibitionism. Or Mai Kujaku did. It didn't matter much what the old Mais enjoyed. Hey were old new. "I'd be delighted." She waited until they were out of earshot to say, "You're wicked."

Darchelle sniffed. "I do not apologise for treating fools like fools. And neither should you. Show mercy to a fool and you become a fool yourself – but a worse fool than the one you showed kindness to! They have ignorance to blame. They do not known any better. You would have nothing but stupidity. We are worth ten of them."

"Modesty is just a word in the dictionary to you, isn't it?"

Darchelle flashed a smile at an interested looking guest on his way back from a squash game in the onboard gym. Male guests were always intrigued when they saw the contrast of her and Mai together: blonde and brunette, curves and angles, purple eyes and pale grey. "Un de beaucoup," she purred. "One of many."

* * *

By the time they arrived in France, Mai had made good progress reinventing herself. She had taken a shine to playing regular cards as well as Duel Monsters; and also to playing dirty. She was on her own now – in a manner of speaking. She had to take care of herself, however she could. Under Darchelle's tutelage, Mai learned how to use her burgeoning sexuality to her best advantage. Sometimes they would sit in their berth at night and discuss the men on board. Mai also learned how to look out for the ones to avoid.

"Always look at a man's shoes," Darchelle advised. "The eyes are the window to the soul, but the shoes are the window to the wallet. Shiny shoes show a man who cares about his appearance, and is more likely to notice yours. Scruffy shoes under a smart suit show a pretender looking to take advantage of a maiden's virtue."

"A maiden's virtue?" Mai repeated incredulously, to which Darchelle gave one of her shark-tooth smiles.

"Are you saying you are not virtuous, _Mademoiselle Innocent_?"

"Are you?"

Darchelle laughed. "I am what I am, and I am whatever I want to be at any given moment. I am me."

Mai learned a lot from the elegant French girl – not all of it knowingly. She picked up things and squirreled them away, not knowing when or if she'd ever need them again. She learned a lot in general during her time on the cruise liner.

She'd given up cutting her hair out of financial necessity while on the streets, but when it reached past her shoulders she realised how unlike her old self she could make herself look with just a change of hairstyle. The difference between scraping it back off her face and allowing it to swing loose was astronomical. Gone was the religiously straightened Eiga Yutaka bob; replaced by something wilder and freer, which better reflected Mai's personality now.

She also learned how to apply make-up in a different way than her mother, whom she'd previously imitated. Her mother had liked minimalism and pale colours, and Mai Yutaka had too. Mai Kujaku, on the other hand, preferred extravagance. She liked bright eye-shadows ringed by thick mascara, and never went anywhere without lipstick and gloss. After a couple of misfires and overcompensations, when cruise guests accused her of being a drag queen, she discovered a new version of herself who had, perhaps, been bursting to get free all along.

Mai Kujaku didn't have to be a perfect hostess, or a perfect daughter, or a perfect heiress; Mai Kujaku just had to be the perfect Mai Kujaku.

"Je n'ai avant jamais visité la France," Mai stared around at the crowded street, trying not to let her mouth hang open. It was everything she'd imagined after her mother's stories, and yet nothing like she expected. "I've never been to France before." She still felt the need to translate everything into her native speech, as if her tutor was listening.

The stallholder smiled at her. "Mais vous parlez un tel français impeccable."

Mai didn't blush or drop her eyes. Instead, she met his gaze steadily and accepted the compliment for her perfect French. "Merci beaucoup."

The open-air market was a hub of activity. Maybe it wasn't Paris Fashion Week, but the range of cheap, good quality clothes and accessories was gratifying. She'd never come across anything like this in Japan. Then again, in Japan her activities had been so restricted, that was no surprise. No Yutaka offspring would have worn knock-off Christian Dior, but Mai Kujaku could think of nothing better. Inexpensive didn't have to mean tacky. And tacky didn't have to mean second-rate.

There was so much variety! "Il y a tellement variété!"

The stallholder laughed. "Où est votre pays d'origine? N'ont-ils pas beaucoup de variété dans des leurs vêtements?" He was just being pleasant, asking where she was from in an effort to befriend her so she'd buy more from him than from the other stalls, but Mai stiffened.

She had worked hard to keep her past hidden or so vague that nobody could connect her with the missing Yutaka heiress. Not that her escape from Sunshine House had been highly publicised. Her aunts and uncles had apparently kept that as quiet as they had her initial incarceration. It was a mixed blessing. Mai could only hope an obscure French market trader would have no knowledge of a semi-famous Japanese celebrity family or its manifold tragedies.

"Je suis … venu du Japon." There was no point in lying about coming from Japan. She was wearing a borrowed jacket with the cruise line logo on the back, and Darchelle said her accent was quite noticeable to natives. She had tried to be polite, but to Darchelle, polite was saying 'You sound like you've been gargling battery acid' and adding 'darling' to the end.

Mai's limited wardrobe was one of the reasons she had gone ashore to investigate the shopping opportunities when they put into port. She had made a lot from tips during the journey, and since her meals and board were provided, she had enough cash to splash out on something to make her feel like she was living again instead of merely surviving.

She considered her words carefully. "J'ai vécu dans beaucoup d'endroits au Japon." She _had_ lived in many places in Japan. Well, it wasn't exactly lying, was it?

The stallholder pulled a face. "Modes japonaises! Même mon article meilleur marché est meilleur." He wrinkled his nose and spoke derisively of Japanese clothes, as if he was a designer from a Parisian fashion house, not a gnarled old purveyor of flamboyant, late-eighties style outfits in a range of retina-scorching colours. Mai had already spotted some neon orange stilettos studded with diamante hearts, a Neo-Romantic blouse with bell-sleeves the Moscow Circus could have hidden inside, and a lace-up bustier that would have given her mother apoplexy.

She smirked. It seemed to give the stallholder encouragement. "Je veux acheter quelque chose élégante," she told him, asking for something 'stylish' and leaving him to interpret the word.

He held up his index finger. "J'ai au juste de ce que vous avez besoin," he said, promising he had just what she needed. Not wanted, but _needed_.

His certainty was probably an act, but Mai felt a thrill anyway. Shopping would always be a thrill. In a new life of uncertainty, that familiarity was precious. She just needed to make sure she had enough money to get the buzz when she needed it – like when she thought about Japan and all she'd left behind. Retail therapy. She would come to rely on it more than she knew at that moment.

"Je ne peux pas attendre pour inspecter vos articles." She announced she was ready to inspect his wares, shook back her hair and commanded, "Impressionnez-moi!"

"Votre souhait est ma commande, Mademoiselle. Vos yeux sont une couleur très intéressante." The old man stared into her eyes, complimenting their colour, before asking, "Avez-vous jamais envisagé de porter le pourpre?"

_Have you ever thought of wearing purple …? _

"Mai?" Darchelle stared at her.

Mai tossed her hair. This was definitely a hair-toss-worthy outfit. "Oui?"

"You look … different."

Darchelle was in the refectory with Giggle and another winsome but stupid blonde Bunnie Girl. She looked ready to claw her own eyes out. Both were more suited to waitressing, while Mai and Darchelle more often than not worked the cards and other games. Mai's head for numbers and newfound confidence made people take more chances when she asked them to place their bets – especially men in an effort to impress her. Both Darchelle and her companion made a bit on tips, but nowhere near as much as Mai.

"Do you like it?" Mai did a little twirl. The heels of her new boots clicked.

It was getting easier and easier to distance herself from her old life. Every new decision helped. So did the very different looks she got from people these days. Nothing like a bit of blatant envy to salve the soul and make you feel better about yourself. Mai Yutaka would turn seventeen next week, but Mai Kujaku would be twenty-two next month. Mai Yutaka would have looked ridiculous in a bustier and purple spandex miniskirt, but Mai Kujaku made them shine.

"Well," said Darchelle approvingly, "you certainly don't look just _mignon_."

_

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_

To Be Continued …

* * *

.


	6. Duellist

**.**

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**6. Duellist**

* * *

"Aw, but Maaaaaiiiii …" The man was somewhere between tipsy and drunk;' past the giggles but not yet belligerent, and still able to stand up with only a little wobble. He leaned his elbows on the table and rested his chin in his cupped palms. "Why won't you let me take you away from all this?"

"And lose out on all this glitz and glamour?" Mai raised an eyebrow. "Sorry, hon. You're cute, but there's no contest."

He pouted. The guy in the next seat slapped him on the back and laughed heartily. "Don't feel bad, man. Mai's untouchable. No guy can catch her eye. Right, Mai?"

Mai smiled enigmatically and shuffled the cards. "Darn skippy. You want to cut the deck?"

"Better than cutting the cheese."

"You always say the nicest things."

"No fair," the first man continued to complain. "S'the most beyoootiful girl on board."

"More beautiful than your wife?" Mai asked slyly.

He went green. "Don't remind me. Why else do you think I drink?" To illustrate, he slugged his entire glass.

"Quit while you're ahead, man," said his buddy, handing the newly shuffled deck back to Mai. "I was on this liner last Summer and I asked Mai to run away with me to a life of luxury. The Hindenburg had nothing on me when I crashed and burned." He swirled the amber liquid in his own glass. "You're a hard-hearted woman, Mai Kujaku."

"Nope, just picky." She dealt each man two cards, and a pair to the woman and older man either side of them when they indicated they also wanted to play. Blackjack was deceptively simple. One winsome smile plus a cant of her hips could make practically any man bet large sums on what was, essentially, a balancing act between maths and chance.

The woman was an odd addition. Mai got lots of men at her table, but few women unless they were wives or girlfriends making sure their partners didn't stray. This one wasn't attached to any of the three men. She eyed Mai critically before inspecting her cards, but it was the kind of look one might treat to a racehorse when thinking about betting on it, rather than one you might use on a love rival.

Mai watched her, but was distracted by the first man hailing a waitress for another glass of booze. Hm, there sure were a lot of drinkers tonight. Could that be useful for tips? Mai transferred her attention back to the woman. Not with this broad, though. The woman was stunning, no doubt about it, but she didn't have the look of a heavy gambler. Her Chinese-style dress was killer though – very _en vogue_. Paris had debuted something just like it last week on the catwalks. Mai had come to recognise quality craftsmanship and knew the one she was looking at probably cost a packet.

Despite this, the woman looked like twelve miles of bad road. Someone had come down to the casino to forget her troubles, not make more. Mai suspected this visit may have involved forcing herself away from the Alanis Morisette and Meredith Brooks CDs back in her cabin. She gave a sympathetic smile that didn't reach her eyes before starting the game.

"Hit me," said the woman when it was her turn. Her voice wasn't as old as Mai had thought. It sounded lighter, younger, but still tired.

Mai dutifully took a card from the top of the deck and passed it to her. The object was to get the total value of your cards as close to twenty-one as you could. Exceed that and you were out. Players asked the dealer to 'hit' them with fresh cards or 'stuck' with what they had. When everybody had stuck they revealed their hands and the closest total won. In the casino, players bet against the house, represented by Mai and her hand. If they won, she owed them their winnings based on the odds and how many players had participated, but if Mai won, they owed the house its share. Sometimes the simplest games reaped the biggest rewards – or the biggest disasters. Mai knew all too well how small actions could snowball, so Blackjack appealed to her.

The woman glanced at her new card and nodded. "Hit me."

Mai dealt her another.

Her expression melted into annoyance. "Feh." The woman threw down her hand. "I'm bust." She eyed Mai's costume. "Or you are, I should say."

Mai didn't bat an eye. She had become much more inured to barbs during her time on board. You couldn't be a beautiful young woman in a Playboy-esque costume without getting a few insults, usually from WAGs who saw her as a threat, or as a reminder of their own fading youth and looks.

She had also become a lot less modest in the intervening years since she stopped being Mai Yutaka. She knew she was attractive, but she knew it in the way a steakhouse chef knows he's good at cooking T-bones, or an Olympic sprinter knows she's good at running. Mai's looks were her tools. A good workman knows their tools inside out, back to front, in dark and in light, good weather and bad, and never, ever felt ashamed of knowing how to use them better than everyone else.

The woman shrugged and left when Mai didn't react. Mai forgot her immediately and looked expectantly at the remaining players.

"I'll stick," said the old man.

"Me too," muttered the guy she'd turned down.

"Your turn, Mai," said the one who'd shuffled the cards.

Mai smiled, tapped the top of the deck and raised a finger to her lips in a pout. "I'm not sure. Should I stick?" She tapped her top lip in thought. "Or ... twist?" She swivel her waist a little, knowing the effect it would have. "I just can't decide."

The guy she'd turned down groaned.

Mai smirked. The whole tapping routine looked like coquettishness, but in reality it was her way of inhaling the scent she'd dabbed from the uppermost card. She had her own system for hitting or sticking, with distinctive perfumes for higher or lower cards. From that she could work out whether it was worth taking another card or holding on to what she had.

"I'll try my luck," she said, knowing it wasn't luck at all. She drew another card, inserted it into the fan of her fingers and batted them like a geisha. "Stick. Gentlemen, reveal your hands."

She won, of course.

"You always win, Mai!"

"Not always," she said, collecting their cards.

"Near enough!"

"I'm just lucky, I guess. And good at math. You might want to lay off the booze if you want to play again. It makes counting easier."

Their easy laughter kept her spirits buoyed until she finished her shift. She underwent the typical rigmarole of them begging her to stay, of slinging her arm around her replacement in a manner just short of sexual, and made her escape while their brains were occupied with lesbian Bunnie Girl fantasies.

_Perverts_, Mai thought as she slid through the crowd and avoided known gropers. It took her ages to reattach her tail when these jokers pulled too hard and it came off in their hands. They thought it was hilarious, but _they_ didn't have to stay up late stabbing their fingers trying to sew it back on when they had no talent for needlepoint.

She waved at her male counterpart across the casino floor. He and his table were surrounded by boozy women. It was a mirror image of her own table. Briefly, she wondered why the Bad Road had come to her instead of drowning her sorrows with him, or one of the other male workers. They all wore dickie bowties and black tuxedo pants with no shirts. Mai knew how many of them religiously waxed, plucked and oiled their torsos because of that, smiled a tiny smile at their vanity, and retreated to her quarters for some well-earned rest.

As if summoned by Mai's thoughts, the woman herself suddenly emerged from the shadow of a potted plant by the door. She swayed, squinting at Mai. She didn't say anything, but her gaze was a lot more direct and assessing than her stance suggested she was capable of.

"Are you okay, ma'am?" Mai asked, even though she was off duty and didn't actually have to care anymore. "Would you like some help?"

"I'd like you to never call me ma'am again," Bad Road replied. "I'm not _that_ old."

"Sorry, uh, miss."

One corner of her mouth twitched. "That was some trick with the cards."

"Trick?"

"I was also there at your last duel on board. Very entertaining. Informative, too."

The back of Mai's neck prickled. This woman didn't _sound_ threatening. In actual fact, she sounded friendly. Still, a chill went down Mai's spine at her words. Sharks didn't disturb the surface of the water before they struck, much as Hollywood and that famous black triangle would have you believe. "Our aim is to make every cruise a memorable one."

Bad Road snorted. "Well, this one was certainly that. My fiancée was supposed to come with me. He didn't show up at the port, and I doubt he's going to show up at the wedding either." She sighed. "Not unless wearing one of the bridesmaids as a fashion accessory suddenly becomes part of the dress code."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Don't be. I was too young for marriage anyway. I think I just agreed to marry him because I wanted some roots. I wouldn't have been happy playing the little itty bitty wifey, though. Not for me. Nope. No siree. God, does this boat always move around so much?"

Mai didn't reply. The crossing was smooth as glass.

Bad Road shook her head. Her pupils were dilated. "This was the impetus I needed to turn my life around. I didn't like the path I was headed down anyway. This just gives me an excuse to do what I really want, instead of following the accepted blueprint and becoming a happy little wife-mother-creature." She winked. "Minus the happy part, of course. No, I guess I won't be parading hubby home for any happy reunion thinugmmyjigger. I know where I'm headed next, and it's not down any aisle." She hiccupped. "Possibly there will be porcelain involved, though."

"It must be nice to have a definite direction." The words slipped out before Mai could stop them. She wasn't even aware they were in her brain before they left her mouth.

"It beats just drifting." The woman shrugged. "Why am I even telling you this? You're just a kid." She squinted. "Or maybe not. How old _are_ you?"

"A lady never discusses her age or her weight. Sorry." Mai gave a shrug of her own.

Bad Road stared at her, wrong-footed for a moment. Then she threw back her head and laughed. It was a raucous laugh, totally at odds with her refined appearance. Her dress had a high neck, whereas most women in the casino wore plunging, backless numbers to compete with each other over who had the best boob job. "You're all right, kid. Now if you'll excuse me, my stomach and I would like to go kiss goodbye to our I Don't Need Your Stupid Engagement Ring Because I Have Tequila farewell drinks." She hiccupped again. Her eyes widened. "'Scuse me ..."

After regaining her feet and brushing herself off, Mai made her way thoughtfully back to the cabin she shared. Darchelle was already half-changed for bed. She had few reservations about stripping down to her skivvies in front of others. Mai had become accustomed to it over the past two years. In truth, not much had changed since she first came on board, and yet in many ways everything had.

Mai flopped onto her bunk and pulled a pillow over her face.

"Rough night?" Darchelle asked.

"Same as normal."

"Ah." She nodded. "Il était affreux."

"Horrendous. Yes." Mai sighed and replaced the pillow under her head. "I don't know what I'll do when you're gone."

Darchelle took out her earrings, placing each one carefully in the little jewellery box she kept on the bedside cabinet. Then she took off her engagement ring. The diamond glittered at Mai enough to make her blink even though she was on the other side of the cabin. "You will do as I do and find a good man to tame you."

"As if! No, I don't need a man." Mai stared at the underside of Darchelle's bunk. "What I need is more than I can get being a Bunnie Girl." She made a wry face. "Even if the money is fantastic."

She didn't rely just on tips and her basic wage anymore. Instead, after mooting the idea to her superior, she now divided her time between the blackjack table and the duelling field. The cruise line had jumped on the new Duel Monsters bandwagon and introduced several events featuring the popular card game, which had risen from childish fad to international pastime – like tobogganing, Ping-Pong and talent contests. Now Mai duelled passengers as part of her work, and also had a little sideline going in which she played a 'psychic' who could guess whatever card was next in a deck she hadn't shuffled herself – her perfume tactics again. Rich, bored men thought they could beat the little lady. Their rich, bitter wives wanted payback for the way their husbands looked at Mai and sought to humiliate her. Mai trounced all comers. She had put away a tidy sum from her extra duties.

"You and money," Darchelle sighed. "You seem to value it more than anything else."

"I just know what it's like not to have any, and it sucks."

"I will not disagree with you on that point, but Mai, sometimes I think you are too harsh – on yourself, and on the rest of the world." Darchelle shook her head. "You say you do not wish for a husband, but how do you know? Since I have known you, you have never even dated. Well, apart from that Jean Claude Magnum _imbécile_." She stuck out her tongue.

"That wasn't a date."

"Peut-être pas. But he did duel you for your hand in marriage. That implies a romantic interest."

"No, it implies stalker tendencies and a male ego the size of the Pacific Ocean. Like I said, not a date. Jean Paul Magnum was a loser who couldn't take no for an answer and didn't have the skills to be more than _un rôdeur rampant_." Mai twinkled her fingers dismissively. "Nothing but a creepy stalker. Je ne veux pas me marier, Darchelle." She shook her head. "No marriage. Not for me. I want excitement. I want adventure. I want to skip all forms of seasickness. I want to stop wearing rabbit ears. I'm _bored_ and sick of the lack of respect around here."

"I can think of ways a husband would not bore you, sweetheart."

Mai threw the pillow at her. "Vous êtes brut! But seriously, Darchelle. I think it's time for me to move on. I don't want my life to stall in first gear. I need a challenge. I feel like I'm just existing these days. I want to _live._"

"But where will you go?"

"I heard the money is good for a professional Duel Monsters duellist."

"You would turn a children's card game into a career path?"

"The European circuit is pretty tough, but the prizes are amazing. Auditions to become competitors in the French Tournament start in six weeks. Whoever becomes French Champion will get an awful lot of Euros as prize money. They'd also become eligible for the European Competition, and the challenge will be extreme. My contract is up for renewal next month and I have enough for the fee to audition in Paris. Coincidence? I think not."

Darchelle's eyes widened. "You are allowed to enter?" She didn't know the whole story, but over two year of living in each other's pockets, Darchelle's sharp brain had figured out there were holes in Mai's story. As testament to their friendship, however, she hadn't pressed for details, and Mai was grateful for that. She wasn't sure she'd ever be able to talk about her life as Mai Yutaka or her brief spell as Mai Valentine. Not without choking.

"I can work it so I am," she replied.

"Is this something legal or something I should not ask about?"

"Just go back to polishing your ring, hon."

"Hon?" Darchelle laughed to herself. "When I first met you, you would never have called anyone that. You have become so unceremonious, Mai."

Mai smiled her very own shark-tooth grin. "Darn skippy."

* * *

There was only one person Mai could think to call with her good news. She would be back from her honeymoon by now. The receiver burned in Mai's hand as she bounced from foot to foot, bursting with her news. "Darchelle? It's me, Mai. Dar, I have the most incredible news!"

"Excusez-moi? Qui êtes-vous?" said a strange woman's disembodied voice.

Mai stared into the phone. "Uh … J'mappelle Mai Kujaku. Est-ce qu'qui je parle?" It wasn't her best French, but after months of speaking almost nothing _but_ since she joined the French National heats, at least she no longer translated everything into Japanese after she said it. That still didn't help her identify this woman, however. She was sure she'd punched in the correct number, but had no idea who she'd ended up calling.

"Vous voulez parler à Madame Valmont?"

Madame … oh yeah, that was Darchelle's new surname after she got married, wasn't it? Mai replied that she did indeed wish to speak to Mrs. Valmont.

The woman's reply injected ice into Mai's veins, starting in her ear and the hand clutching the receiver, sluicing through her bloodstream to her heart.

"Avez-vous entendu les nouvelles? Monsieur et Madame Valmont étaient dans un accident de voiture il y a trois semaines."

A car accident? Three weeks ago? Mai cleared her suddenly dry throat. "Je n'avais pas entendu." She hadn't heard, she hadn't known. She'd been busy. She'd though Darchelle was happily on her honeymoon after that tremendous wedding. Her new husband had pulled out all the stops for his beautiful bride. Mai pictured them, laughing at the altar, and shut her eyes. "Était-il sérieux?" _Please don't let it have been serious. Please don't let it have been serious. Please –_

"Je suis désolé," the woman apologised, "mais c'était un accident mortel. Il n'y avait aucun survivant dans non plus des deux voitures"

A fatal accident…? No survivors …?

_No. Oh God, not again._

The rest of the conversation passed in a blur. Mai replaced the phone and sat on the edge of the hotel bed. The sheets were crisp and cool. She fisted them, knuckles white, trying to steady her breathing. She was stunned. It felt like she'd been hit in the head by a two-by-four. Her skull felt like an iron band had been placed around it and someone was tightening the screws.

Darchelle was dead? Not possible. Not. Possible.

Mai pictured her friend – her first real one in many years, if ever, she now realised. Darchelle in her Bunnie Girl outfit. There ceremonial bonfire when they each burned theirs before setting out for their new lives. The sound of her laughter. The way she frowned when painting her toenails. The click of her favourite boots. The sweep of her hair. The sound of her voice. Darchelle was too alive to be dead, let alone dying _three weeks ago_.

_I never knew. Three weeks, and I never knew. I was too wrapped up in my own thing. If I had called ... emailed ... __**something.**_

Mai didn't know how long she sat there. Eventually she raised her eyes and stared into the cubby-slash-dresser alcove where all her cosmetics were ranged like soldiers gathered for war. In the mirror her eyes were puffy and red, but her mascara wasn't even damp. Her long, wild hair had started to go into corkscrews. She patted them down and then flopped backwards to stare at the ceiling instead.

"I won, Dar," she whispered. "I made it. I'm eligible for the European Championship. French Representative. See? I didn't need a man to make me … to make me …" She rolled onto her side. "Ah, screw it."

Just like years earlier, when another road accident stole people she cared about, nobody answered.

* * *

Mai looked up at the liner in the dock. She hadn't set foot on a ship since quitting her job as a Bunnie Girl. It seemed things had come full circle, except this time she wasn't boarding as an employee. No, this time she was an honoured guest, on her way to show the world that the French Champion was nobody to be trifled with.

There would also be no friendly co-worker to help her acclimatise this time, either. The grief over Darchelle was still too fresh, so Mai pushed it into a box and put the box on a shelf at the very back of her mind. She slung her bag over her shoulder, tossed her hair and marched up the gangplank like she owned the joint. One thing being a Bunnie Girl had taught her was to act like you deserved respect if you wanted people to pay it to you, no matter what you were wearing.

After this Duellist Kingdom thing was over, Mai planned to go back to the European circuit and amp her reputation up to the next level using the kudos from Pegasus's contest. Three high-octane wins would definitely cement her as a force to be reckoned with in the world of competitive Duel Monsters. She could get an agent, start making public appearances maybe. There was talk of merchandising for the biggest names in this sport. Imagine getting in on ground level with a cash cow like that?

And Mai _would_ win Duellist Kingdom, make no mistake about it.

Even weirder than being at sea again was being back in Japan for more than a stopover. She had always taken her leave in France when she had vacation time. When she'd heard the Duellist Kingdom cruise would leave from Domino City, she'd almost refused the invitation. Only her pride and the thought of the astronomical prize money made her come back. Nonetheless, she had remained in her hotel room until departure.

Consequently she knew little of the other entrants, but a glance confirmed all she needed to know. They were all just kids, wannabes and no-hopers. Her stray cat strut was a litmus test. Those who fell back to let her pass were forever afterwards worthy of nothing but her disgust. Those who didn't act like iron filings scurrying away from the reverse end of a magnet were worth a second look.

She hadn't been near the mansion. Nobody in town had recognised her. She knew she looked different, acted different, _was_ different. Mai Yutaka and Mai Kujaku only shared DNA and a first name. To all intents and purposes, the old Mai was dead.

Still, it was a kick in the teeth to have her suspicions confirmed: her family had never really looked for her. If there _had_ been a search for their escaped niece, it had been half-hearted. No rewards or anything like that. Probably she'd been reduced to a cold case; just some cardboard box of relevant details in the basement of the local police building. She had been missing for years. They probably thought she was dead. The irony stung, but not so much as it might have, once upon a time. Mai Yutaka _was_ dead, but exactly who had killed her? Death by a thousand paper-cuts – each one on the side of a money bill.

Mai rammed a fist against her hip and surveyed her Duellist Kingdom rivals. Centring herself in the moment helped. She could take care of herself, especially against punks like these. _Piece of cake_, she thought. _Now to make sure I get some proper accommodation for this trip. No way am I sharing a berth with any of these bozos._

* * *

There was something comforting about spending the night in a real encampment with other people around. Mai suspected it was called 'survival instinct', but it felt like more than that. She peered at Yuugi and his friends, listening to their chatter. They weren't that much younger than her, but they made her feel so _old_. Had she ever been this innocent? Or this gullible?

_Stop it,_ she told herself. _They helped you out._

_Yeah, but in exchange for what?_

Watching them laugh and swap easy banter reminded her of those brief times when she'd had people she could do the same with – Tink and Darchelle especially. But both of Mai's friends were gone, a salient reminder not to get too attached to people, and especially not to rely on them. Reliance was like sticking a big bull's-eye to your ass and shouting "Here I am, Universe! Neener, neener, neener!"

It was too risky to be more than a casual ally. Mai knew Duel Monsters was a world of competitiveness and dirty tricks. Yuugi and his pals hadn't played professionally, nor had time to figure out that her MO was more common than their 'heart of the cards' and honesty nonsense. If you didn't look after yourself in this gig, nobody else was going to, and woe betide the fool who thought otherwise.

_When did you get so hard-hearted_? a tiny piece of her thought. It sounded like a sliver of glass trying to be heard over the crash of a breaking window.

_When I learned to survive_, she thought back, settling back without settling down for the night.

Nonetheless, familiarity of a kind she couldn't quite place wormed its way around her mind as she studiously refused to meet anyone's eye and responded to Jounouchi's barbs with her own.

_

* * *

_

To Be Continued ...

* * *

.


	7. Survivor

**.**

**

* * *

**

7. Survivor

* * *

Mai's fist thumped against the side of the case. It couldn't be made of glass. Diamond, perhaps? Nothing else would be this strong. No matter how hard she punched, or how loud she yelled, Jounouchi and Yuugi just kept on walking away.

"Guys! I'm in here! Don't leave me!"

This was so pathetic. She wounded like some whiney damsel in distress! She was supposed to be the strong, independent modern woman, who didn't rely on anyone and needed them even less. Yet she couldn't help crying out. The sight of their backs inspired a kind of hysterical panic, which bubbled up like water out of a blocked drain. Her insides curdled. She was a hairsbreadth from throwing up all over the reinforced whatever-the-hell-this-stuff-was.

"_Don't leave me_!" she yelled. Her hand hurt. The glass wasn't even smeared. Her entire face burned, blood rushing into her face as she yelled, "Malik, you bastard, let me out of here!"

How could she have lost to him – some kid with a magic stick and an ego bigger than his brain? It was embarrassing. It was disgraceful. It was outrageous!

It was terrifying.

Exhausted from yelling after her arduous duel, Mai's forehead made contact with the hard surface of the container. She knew, intellectually, that this wasn't really happening. Her body was somewhere else, but this all felt so _real_. If she hadn't see and felt for herself such weird events and crises as she had since Duellist Kingdom, she would have dismissed all this as a cheese nightmare or a hallucination. Magic didn't exist. Souls couldn't be pulled out and stuck in boxes. Nor could they be stored in cards, won in duels or banished to other realms where monsters lived – real monsters, not the sick freaks with human faces whom Mai had always though the worst kind of evil until now.

She knew magic existed. She knew there were things in the universe science couldn't explain. And she knew this wasn't a trick, or a joke, or a hallucination.

It _was_ a nightmare, though; one Malik had instigated and continued to control from somewhere in the shadows, as he had been controlling everything since the start. Seto Kaiba hadn't lost control of Battle City, because he'd never truly had it in the first place.

Malik had promised her soul would be shredded if she stayed in this place long enough. She had to get out of here before –

"Avez-vous entendu quelque chose?"

Mai froze.

"J'ai pensé que j'ai entendu quelqu'un exiger. Someone was calling out. Did you hear it?"

"Nope. I didn't hear nuthin'."

_Oh … oh my …_

"Je dois avoir été erroné. I must have been mistaken."

"I wish you'd quit talking Froggy all the time."

"And I wish you had more class. Froggy?"

"You eat frogs' legs, doncha?"

"I have never in my life eaten frogs legs. Or snails. And I'm not a fan of garlic. I have, however, eaten horse and goat."

"Ew!"

"This from the girl whose national dish is raw fish."

The familiar laughter stabbed through Mai like a spear of ice. She finally looked behind instead of ahead to the spot where Yuugi and Jounouchi had vanished. She knew what she was going to see. She knew it was impossible too – _all_ this was impossible – but when she saw Tink and Darchelle her heart still lurched.

_It's not real. It can't be real. This is all just Malik's mind games. That sicko. I'll wring his scrawny, schizophrenic neck – _

Tink shrugged. Mai remembered that shrug, designed to shrug off the world as well as whatever had just been said. She could clearly see the Tinkerbell tattoo, Darchelle's favourite sparkly stilettos and black tights combo, Tink's inimitable haircut, Darchelle's deep blue eyes, plus every step and gesture of theirs she'd only seen in her memories since they each died and left her.

They passed under her prison. They were talking animatedly, as if they'd known each other forever, despite never actually meeting in their lives. Darchelle gave one of her shark-tooth smiles. Tink dashed ahead, pivoting on one foot and throwing shadow-punches, before dropping her arms and spinning in place. Tink never could keep still. Mai often had to run to keep up when they were out together. She was always in motion, never happy to stay still and just smell the roses. Darchelle preferred sitting around discussing fashion the latest gossip and sipping daiquiris whenever she could get away with it.

"I have never had a friend like you," Darchelle said warmly.

Tink shot her a wink. "Back atcha, girl."

Mai called their names – screamed them – but they followed after Jounouchi and Yuugi without looking up at her.

_This isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't – _

She was alone again.

**You're always alone in the end,** whispered a voice. It dripped into her consciousness like poison. She shook her head, covering her ears, but somehow it came in loud and clear anyway. **Everybody always leaves you. But that's what you wanted, right? To take care of yourself **_**by**_** yourself?**

No. No, this wasn't what she wanted at all. This was wrong. It was all wrong.

"Please," she whispered, hating the way she sounded. Pathetic loser was _such_ a bad look for her – this season or any other. "Please, don't leave me. Not again. Don't leave me alone again … Jounouchi … Yuugi … Dar … Tink … anybody …"

"To be truthful, I don't know why we even had children."

"_Child_, dear. God help us if we'd had any more."

In ten seconds, Mai's situation got a whole lot worse. Her heart went from hurting to being ripped out of her chest with white-hog tongs. Malik couldn't have -could he?

Of course he could.

"No, no, no, no, no …"

Her parents marched into view. Her mother rummaged in one of many chic little purses purchased in Paris, or Milan, or wherever the latest catwalk had been set up. She pushed her blonde bob behind one ear, while her father stared at his cell phone. Neither so much as glanced up.

"This isn't happening," Mai hissed through clenched teeth. "When I get out of here I'm going to kill Malik. Slowly. I'm gong to take that Millennium Rod and shove it up his –"

**You're never getting out of here,** chuckled the voice. **This is a prison of your own making. You wanted people to leave you alone. You asked for this. You said you didn't need anybody. Remember how you told Jounouchi you were fine on your own? Remember how he rejected you? You were right all along – you're better off without anybody making demands on your time. Who needs friends or family? Aren't you happy you finally got your wish?**

"I never wanted this."

**Independence. Freedom. A life without limits. That's what you've always struggled for. To be able to be yourself no matter what! Friends always leave you anyway, so why bother making them? That's just **_**asking **_**for trouble. Well, now you've got your wish. You have the rest of your life to be yourself, and to take care of yourself, and nobody will be there to stop you. **

**Too bad the rest of your life won't be very long.**

Mai screamed out her protest. She punched with renewed energy. Her knees started to cramp. Her spine hurt from being hunched over. She rocked back on her butt and kicked out with both legs. She even considered head-butting the side of her prison. Her eyes blurred with a combination of pain, rage and frustration – and also grief.

"Screw it; I don't need anybody."

Mai didn't bother waiting to look this time, just snapped her head around immediately. She still smarted when she saw the little blonde girl squatting in her nightdress, hugging her knees and shaking her head.

"I can take care of myself. Nobody wants me around anyway, so why should I care about anybody else? Everybody else is stupid and mean. They only want me for what they can get, not because they actually _like _me. Well, who needs them? Not me. I'm fine on my own. I always have been, and I always will be."

Mai realised the girl wasn't talking to her knees, but to the thing clasped in her hands.

"Right, Harpy Lady?" The girl looked over her shoulder, the first apparition to meet Mai's gaze.

Mai's world halted. She skidded through its stillness, frightened and off-balance. Her throat ached. Every heartbeat thundered in her ears.

"You killed me. You didn't need me anymore, so you threw me away and didn't look back, just like you did when you ran out on Katsuya. He helped you and you ditched him when he wasn't useful anymore. Why should you get treated any better now? Nobody needs you. You're just dead weight."

Mai's mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. She hadn't thought of Katsuya in years. He was part of Mai Yutaka's world, and not an auspicious part. The unanswered questions and guilt were too painful to ponder, so she had given up doing it to concentrate on her new life, telling herself it didn't matter, it was a long time ago, and there was nothing she could do about it now anyway.

She bent her head forward. Sand trickled into her hair and over her neck, but she barely noticed. Softly, unnoticed by the entire universe, tears dripped into the tiny mound that had already gathered by her knees.

**You did this to yourself, Mai. Isn't it everything you ever wanted and more?**

The sickening crack, as her heart and mind finally broke, was heard throughout all the desolate, empty landscape.

* * *

"Loser, loser, nobody likes a loser!"

Mai concentrated on the bill. She hadn't paid this one either. The numbers seemed to dance before her eyes, blurring so she couldn't tell one column from another. She tossed the paper aside and put her face in her hands.

"You can't ignore me forever. Loser. Failure. Big disappointment. How _does_ it feel to suck at everything you used to be good at?"

"You're not really here."

"Wrong." Little Mai scooted across the floor, her hands passing through Mai's as she tried to prise them open. "I've always been with you. You know it, and I know it, so why keep pretending? I'm _you_. Or at least I was."

It had started slowly, catching sight of something out the corner of her eye that may or may not have been there: the rustle of cloth, a wisp of blonde hair, one bright purple eye through a crowd. Then she'd started hearing the echo of childish laughter long after she passed by the playground at the end of her block.

At first Mai had thought she was just overtired and stressed – small wonder after what happened during Battle City. Then the flashes became more solid, the voice more lingering. By the time she grasped what was going on, the apparition from Malik's nightmare was firmly entrenched in her life and reluctant to unhook her claws. She followed Mai everywhere, talking constantly, giving voice to the uncertainties and self-doubt that had already taken root after her loss and near-death experience.

"You could go and visit their graves, you know. It's an open cemetery. Just walk in and say 'Hi Mommy, hi Daddy, I failed at life so I'm coming to join you now'. It'd be so easy."

"Go away."

"That's right; push me away too, just like you did with aaaaall the others."

Mai hadn't spoken to Jounouchi, Yuugi, Anzu, or any of her friends in ages. It had started as a spell of licking her wounds, and gradually grown into something else. Shame, perhaps? Guilt? Embarrassment? All of the above? An unsettling _wrongness_ had taken up position in her life, making everything a bad fit where once it had been tailored perfectly to her. Her stray cat strut no longer buoyed her confidence. She found herself slinking along like she didn't belong wherever she happened to be – the mall, the supermarket, a duelling tournament, it didn't matter. Tossing her hair drew attention she no longer wanted, as she became convinced people were whispering about her behind her back. They always had been, but somehow it had been easier to take it before. Now their words, both real and imaginary, cut deep and left Mai feeling like a pound of raw mince even when she _won_ her duels.

She had always told herself she didn't need anyone, but this was different; and all the while, Little Mai gave a running commentary of everything she'd done wrong, was doing wrong, and would do wrong in the future. There was no escape. Even in the bathroom, or in bed at night, Little Mai talked and talked and _talked_. Mai barely slept anymore. Consequently her thoughts felt fuddled in daylight hours, when they weren't circling at attack themselves like a pack of rabid wolves in a famine.

Confusion barely described it. Depression scratched the surface. Psychosis was probably accurate, or post-traumatic stress disorder, but trying to label the wrongness just made her head hurt. Mai couldn't function anymore, and frankly, she wasn't sure she even wanted to. It _would_ be so much easier to just let everything go to seed. She didn't feel like herself. She didn't feel like … anyone.

"Oh look, you're crying again! I thought you never cried. Another lie!"

Mai wondered whether she really had sounded this callous as a child. Maybe her aunts and uncles had been right; maybe she was just a black sheep, better left locked away where nobody could see her. Where nobody could _touch_ her. Maybe her incarceration at Sunshine House really had been for her own good after all.

No, she couldn't think like that! Her family had betrayed her. She had spent years trying to forget that deepest of hurts. She'd be betraying herself to think otherwise now!

Wouldn't she?

It was all so bewildering. She had tried so _hard_ to make something of herself, but it seemed all she'd made was a mess.

"Nobody wants you around. If they'd wanted you, they would've called you by now, don't you think? But not one little tootle. Not one text message. No emails, no visits, nothing. Some friends. But then, who'd want to be friends with a loser like you?"

Mai wished she'd never met Jounouchi or his pals. This was all his fault – his rejection had distracted her and made her screw up her duel with Malik. In her confusion, and with Little Mai's support, she had started to connect him and the others with the wrongness. Before she encountered Yuugi's group at Duellist Kingdom, everything had been going swimmingly. She'd never had to worry about magic, or getting her soul ripped out by the roots, or any of that crap. Following her success at the French finals, and her entry in the European Championship, her star had been rising. Now it had not only fallen, it had created a big crater where her self-esteem and sense of identity used to be. In her confusion and pain it was easy to look for someone to blame.

"You could just end it," little Mai coaxed. "It really would be easy. A warm bath would lull you, and then some really powerful painkillers would just make you go to sleep. Drowning might even get you first, but you'd be too out of it to care. You wouldn't have to feel anything anymore. Wouldn't that be nice? And then nobody would have to deal with you or your crap ever again. You could do one thing right, at least, and save everybody a whole heap of trouble."

Mai shook her head. It scared her that Little Mai's suggestions were starting to look tempting.

"No wonder your parents were happy to leave you alone all the time. You're –"

"Shut _up_!" In frustration, Mai hurled her hairbrush. It passed straight through Little Mai's body and crashed into the mirror beyond. Fragments tinkled and fell.

Little Mai tutted. "That's seven more years' bad luck. Really _really_ sucks to be you."

Mai didn't answer. She was busy staring at the shards on the carpet. They glinted, throwing back dozens of reflections that all seemed to mock her. Dozens of Mais, and not one of them real. Maybe not even the one looking down into them.

"Sharp, aren't they?" Little Mai's smile was inviting but hideous at the same time. Mai didn't think she'd ever made that expression in her life, but it was had to argue when the proof was standing in front of her. "Are you trying to tell yourself something, Mai? Giving yourself the tools you need to do what you know, in your heart of hearts, is what's best for everyone?"

The biggest shard was triangular, its edges smooth and perfect for cutting –

"No!" She shot to her feet. "_No_!" She hurtled out of the room before she could stop to think, to even consider … "No, that's not me! That's _not me_!"

It was raining outside. Full circle. How ironic. She ran into it just as she had done years ago, when she was Mai Yutaka running away from her problems. Now Mai Kujaku was doing exactly the same thing. She hadn't changed. She was still the one nobody wanted or cared about – not even herself.

She fetched up against a clutch of trash cans in an alley not far from the apartment she'd been renting. There she leaned on the wall, pressing a hand against her mouth to stop her gorge rising. She couldn't believe what she'd been thinking. The urge had been so terrifyingly strong. She wasn't sure she could have resisted if she'd stayed and tried to clean up the broken mirror. She shook her head, sinking down amidst all the other garbage and wondering when the hell her life had become a dartboard for the gods to throw sharp things at.

When the shadow fell across her, she thought it was just Little Mai come to gloat again; so the male voice was a shock.

"Mai? Get up, Mai."

She looked at the proffered hand uncomprehendingly. "What? What are you – who are you?"

The guy standing next to her smiled. Or smirked. She couldn't really tell through the rain. "The name's Valon. I've come to help you."

* * *

It was hard to describe the sensation of letting the Orichalcos in. Later, when trying to explain why she'd done it, Mai would liken it to a cool damp cloth being placed on her forehead during a raging fever. The relief may not have been long-lasting, but it was what she needed – or thought she needed – at the time.

All her feelings since Battle City surged to the surface the moment she stepped inside Dartz's chamber. Little Mai danced in the corner of her vision, screaming obscenities and popping in and out, trying to get Mai's attention. Something about the chamber made it difficult for her to stick to Mai like usual, as if the dark magic that had created her had less sway in the presence of a much older power. She was still there, like a gnawing suspicion Mai was unable to shed, but fading.

That was what cinched it. Mai had only half believed Valon's promise that Dartz could fix things for her. It was easier to screw stuff up than repair it – a proven fact of the universe.

"You'll always be a failure!" Little Mai shrieked. "You'll always be who you are! They can't change that – nobody can!"

Dartz's fingertip met Mai's skin. Sudden relief washed through her, taking away her confusion and leaving only a crystal clarity of purpose. Maybe it wasn't a purpose she'd have chosen in other circumstances, but in exchange for reprieve from her demons, it was a debt she was willing to pay. The Orichalcos made everything clear, streamlining her thinking until only the important stuff remained.

She felt reborn; no longer Mai Yutaka or Mai Kujaku, but someone else. Someone new. Someone with a soul not left in tatters by torture and constant brutal abandonments.

This time, she swore, she'd stick to her identity, her purpose, her goals. They were hers and nothing would take them from her. Nothing would tear her away from the stability they represented. Whatever it took, whatever was asked of her, Mai swore, she wouldn't give in to her fears again.

* * *

"Yeah, that plan worked _so_ well. Great idea, Mai. Juuuust peachy. Throw your hand in with the bad guys. Because that idea's always a winner."

She stood on the cliff because it afforded the best view of the ocean. That and she had nowhere else to go. She'd let the lease on her apartment slide while she was with DOMA. They had taken care of all her food and accommodation needs while she had other things to think about.

_Like how best to take over the world and screw over the only real friends I actually have. Had. Have. Ah screw it. I am such an idiot._

She half expected Little Mai to chime her agreement, but nobody spoke. Little Mai hadn't reappeared when the Orichalcos's hold was broken, for which Mai was eternally grateful. Even those moments when she had doubted the veracity of Dartz and DOMA, when she had almost broken the Orichalcos's hold over her, fear of seeing the apparition of her younger self had made her stick her guns.

_So maybe not __**all**__ of that heinously huge mistake was so bad. _

_Wait, what am I thinking? _

It was easy to think out here. The ocean was endless and ancient. It humbled a person to stand next to it. In the grand scheme of things, Mai's life was just a piece of plankton on the tide of life.

"See me getting all philosophical." She sighed. "I should be thinking about where I'm going to sleep tonight."

Instead, all she could think about was what she'd left behind this time. She was running again, but this time she was running with the intention of coming back. This time she wasn't escaping, she was just looking for a bit of perspective. She had botched everything good in her life and now she needed to fix it – not escape, but _fix_. That was why she'd left her Harpy Lady card with Valon. It was the sort of promise she still couldn't say out loud, but it _was_ a promise.

Wow. She had actually committed to something other than Duel Monsters. How … weird.

Huh. How come it took until her twenties – her _real _twenties– to finally gain some proper maturity? Mai felt like she'd been playing at being mature all this time. Like diamonds and wine, you couldn't tell the cheap and nasty stuff until you'd sampled the quality. Unlike diamonds and wine, however, maturity didn't look good or taste nice.

She was aware that while she had made a commitment to return and explain herself to Valon – once she was capable of offering a coherent explanation that is – she had made no such commitment to Jounouchi. She was still very ashamed of herself and how she had behaved towards him. Seeing him again required the kind of courage that needed a running start. Shizuka, too, deserved explanations for why her role model had done a one-eighty into Nutcase and then back into Sanity. Not to mention Yuugi, Anzu, Otogi, even that idiot Honda, who had actually turned out to make a lot of sense when it really counted –

Impulsively, Mai bent down and scooped up a handful of stones. She cradled them in one hand and began tossing them off the cliff one by one, watching as they disappeared into the frothy surf below.

"I'm sorry for betraying your friendship, Yuugi." _Plip._ "Sorry for nearly taking your friends away, Anzu." _Plip._ "Sorry for almost getting you killed, Otogi." _Plip._ "Sorry for being such a bitch to your best friend, Honda." _Plip._ "Sorry for not being the person you thought I was, Shizuka." _Plip._

The litany went on and on. As practise for just saying the words, it was good. As practise for actually facing the people she named … well, the jury was still out on that one. Still, you had to start somewhere, right? Catharsis was all about baby steps.

"I'm sorry …" Mai paused, considering. Then she threw two pebbles, one after the other, with extra emphasis. "I'm sorry Mom and Dad, that I wasn't the daughter you wanted, although to be fair you weren't exactly great parents either. I'm sorry, Darchelle, for not going to your funeral, but I just couldn't face saying goodbye to someone that way again. I'm sorry, Tink, for not being straight with you. If I had, maybe you would've been straight with me and we could've worked out both our problems. I'm sorry, Katsuya, for running away and leaving you to face your crazy dad alone. Running away never works; not unless you're willing to run back again and face up to your responsibilities …"

Altogether, she was there for an hour, explaining herself and finally giving voice to the restless demons of her past – some of which she hadn't realised she was carting around until that moment.

How much crap had she been secretly blaming herself for all these years? How many regrets had she stockpiled, always thinking she'd deal with them another day – which, of course, never came.

When she had run out of names and apologies, but still had a few pebbles left, Mai scrunched up her face and threw all of them over the edge. "I'm sorry!" she shouted. "There, are you happy, universe? I! Am! _Sorry_! Now let me fix this so I never have to say that again. Let me finally figure out how to fix _myself_ instead of reinventing the wheel over and over to see if it does something different this time!"

A salty breeze blew in her face. She coughed, staggering backwards.

"Very funny, universe. Ha ha!"

Hunkering down, she hooked her legs over the edge and watched the waves, hoping for divine intervention. Maybe she was also testing herself to see whether to desire to jump would appear. When it didn't, she loosed a long breath and hung her head.

"Okay, so no _deus ex machina_ is coming to save me this time. I get it. Last time didn't work out so well. This is my responsibility. It has to come from me."

Another blast of salty air. Mai refused to flinch this time. She went back to her bike, put on her helmet, started it up and roared away.

_First I have to fix myself. Then I can go back and repair the damage I've done to others._

She leaned forward and gunned the engine, accelerating so the wind whipped back her hair. It was pure exhilaration – no thought, no intention, just _feeling_. This was another unexpected good thing that had come out of DOMA. Without Valon and the others, she never would have discovered her love of top-speed and motorcycles. Mai – Yutaka, Valentine, Kujaku, whatever – absolutely _loved_ motorcycles.

_And Duel Monsters. I need to go back and remind myself of what made me love that if I'm going to fix anything about myself. _

Apologies, recriminations and self-improvement. How boringly mature.

"Look out world," Mai yelled, even though nobody could possibly hear her. "You think this is me signing off? As if. You ain't seen _nothing_ yet!"

* * *

_To Be Concluded …_

* * *

_._


	8. Tool

**A/N****:** So … I was all ready with a conclusion to this fic, and then a few characters basically smoke-bombed my brain with a cry of "Did you really think we'd let you get away with leaving us out? We have things we want to say, biatch!" I may have been a little pre-emptive with the 'to be concluded' last chapter. These chapters aren't from Mai's POV, though, so they're being tied together under the collective name 'Coda' and look more at how she's perceived by others.

* * *

**Coda One: Tool**

* * *

Sometimes Valon wondered what his life would have been like if he'd had a normal childhood. If his mom hadn't taken off, if his dad hadn't been a Grade A asshole with fists of clay, and if he hadn't been bounced in and out of more care homes than he could count: would things have been better? Would he have been a different person? Would he still have ended up working for Dartz? That last question was the most difficult to consider, the more he found out about the secret pies DOMA's fingers were stuck in. He shuddered to think how far back the manipulation of him actually went.

Most times he didn't let those thoughts linger long. He wasn't a fan of playing 'What If'? It was too damn depressing. Besides which, what was to say his life wouldn't have been worse? There was no accounting for fate, and nothing to say a privileged upbringing brought happiness where an impoverished one didn't. Just look at Mai.

Or not, since she wasn't actually there. Which was the whole problem, actually.

When he woke up with Harpy Lady by his side but the card's owner nowhere to be seen, Valon had run through an unexpected emotional gamut. He hadn't experienced anything like it since he let the Orichalcos into his life, but with the stone routed and his ring destroyed he'd no longer had any barrier between him and his emotions. The first jolt had been disorientating, and the following million-and-one sensations no easier to process. He practically spent his first week of freedom staggering between things to lean and prop himself up on, just trying to cope with the onslaught of a decade's worth of unused _feelings_.

The power of the Orichalcos had streamlined his emotional responses, leaving little room for things like regret or affection. He'd wanted that back at the beginning. Raw with grief and anger, frustrated at a world that had no place for him, and no happiness to spare, Valon had wanted to forget what it was to feel. He had wanted to forget the basic human need for people had only brought him heartache: he had wanted a mother who cared for him, a father who cared at all, friends who'd stick by him instead of running for cover when the going got tough, and a nun with a heart big enough for a lonely boy from the wrong side of the tracks. He had obtained none of them. By the time Sister Mary Catherine died in the church fire, Valon's heart was so battered it could barely even bleed anymore. All he had left was anger and hatred, and after that just pain. The Orichalcos had seemed like divine intervention.

And it was, but only because all his problems could be traced back to the stone picking him out and alerting Dartz to prepare him as a soldier of the apocalypse years before he was actually recruited. Valon didn't know how the Orichalcos chose its champions. Something in certain people marked them out, and the stone homed in on that signal. It was then up to Dartz and his considerable influence to organise their lives so that when the stone finally called for them, they were ready and willing to accept it utterly.

So it had come as a complete shock when Mai made Valon go back on what had driven him to the Orichalcos. He'd wanted to _feel_ again. He couldn't decide whether that meant the stone was losing its effect, or whether Mai herself had affected a sea-change in him. Either way, the upshot of having her around was that slowly, day by day, Valon came to care about more than just the mission. What started out as infatuation became something more – something it shouldn't have been possible for him to feel. Somehow, even though she repeatedly knocked him back, Mai worked her way under Valon's skin and scraped away at the fug around his brain, letting in light for the first time in years – since he met a man on the shore of an island where young offenders duelled to the last man standing.

Mai was broken, like him and yet not. She, too, knew what it was to be offered the world in name only. She knew grief – she had to if she'd thought the Orichalcos was the answer, and with the manipulations of DOMA behind it, the source of her grief had to be pretty major. It took a special kind of desperation to share your soul with a chunk of evil rock. Valon had recognised that in her from the beginning, but in the end what he'd seen had only been the tip of the iceberg.

Because Mai wasn't like him. Not that way. Valon had been cut off from any kind of support network, so the Orichalcos was like a saviour from solitude in all its forms. Mai wasn't alone, even when she thought she was. She had people willing to fight for her, even if she didn't see it at the time.

"If they really cared, they would have come for me sooner," she'd said once, in a moment of pique. "Friends aren't supposed to leave you hanging out to dry after –" She'd stopped herself, unwilling even with the Orichalcos's buffering to revisit her worst experiences.

Valon hadn't been on Kaiba's blimp, but he knew what had happened there – and the rest, although that knowledge didn't come until later. DOMA made information their business in ways the Mafia, Yakuza, Triads and their ilk could only dream. Ten thousand years was a long time to set up an information network. Valon knew more about Mai than she probably realised anyone could find out. He also knew who was behind most of her heartbreak.

He knew her real name was Yutaka, and that a now-defeated DOMA rider stood in the road when she was twelve and waited for her parents' car. He knew about Sunshine House, about her fake IDs and the new identity that had allowed her to reinvent herself into someone else. He knew the runaway who called herself 'Tinkerbell' would have continued her life on the streets if not for an anonymous tip-off to the authorities. He knew about the cold case of the missing heiress with the Domino City Police Department, Jean Claude Magnum's bruised ego, and the unsolved accident that had killed a Frenchwoman named Darchelle Gravois – unsolved because DOMA didn't _want_ it solved after they executed her to send Mai closer to the edge of emotional breakdown.

Valon hadn't been stalking Mai, it was just, with every piece of sickening information he uncovered, he couldn't help looking a little deeper, until the sad story of Mai's life lay before him like a jumble of child's building blocks after someone created a magnificent city and then stomped on it. He had just wanted to better understand this complicated, tragic, frustrating woman, who had done what nobody else could in ten whole years, and thought the answer might lay in her past. Instead what he found were answers Mai herself would have wanted.

Or would she? There was a reason Valon hadn't looked into his own past in the same detail as he had Mai's. It was earth-shattering to realise your whole life may have been geared towards breaking you so you'd be a good tool for laying waste to the planet. Some questions were better off without answers.

Then again, some were. Who was he to make that judgment call on Mai's behalf?

Whatever the case, Valon knew the past wasn't where the real answers were. Answers to the questions that actually mattered were future things – they came at the end of problems, and you had to fight through a whole bunch of crap to get at them. He'd had more than his fair share of crap. So had Mai. Maybe now they'd finally get the answers to the questions they'd been asking far longer than anyone should have to.

_Will I ever be happy?_

_Was my misery all my own fault?_

_Is there someone out there for me?_

Valon didn't know. What he _did_ know was how much Harpy Lady meant to the woman called Mai, that he now had it in his possession, and that he hadn't stolen it, but been given it freely. That had to mean something. He wasn't sure what, yet, but he was willing to wait to find out. Mai had her own issues to sift through first. So did he. As ever, their lives echoed each others' even as they split off in parallel directions.

Valon stood on the porch of the house he'd bought with his pay from DOMA but never lived in until after Dartz was finished. Neither Amelda nor Raphael had ever been able to understand the purchase, but when Valon showed the place to Mai he'd gotten the feeling she did. It was important to put down roots, so the wind didn't know you off your feet when it blew harder than you thought you could take. It was good to have the security of a home you could come back to.

Was this a home or just a house?

Valon shook off the unwelcome thought and refocused on the skyline. "Stay safe, Mai," he whispered, as he did every evening. The noise of the ocean swallowed his words. He stared at the card in his hands. Then he pressed a kiss to it.

He was ninety-five percent sure he wasn't the one Mai's heart would make a home with in the end. He had duelled Jounouchi and seen the grim determination in his eyes, and knew how well it complemented the mix of vulnerability and defiance in Mai's. Nevertheless, even the slimmest chance was still a chance.

The card had been sprayed with perfume so often it was permanently imbued with the scent. It made him cough. "Ruined the bloody moment," he muttered, then sighed and leaned on the railing. "Come back soon, Mai, wherever you are. I have things I really need to say to you, and there are things you really need to hear." He paused. "I think."


	9. Heroine

**.**

**

* * *

**

**Coda Two: Heroine**

* * *

Honda thunked down the pizza box and folded his legs under him. "Dinner is served."

"And you said you couldn't cook." Jounouchi reached for the first slice, as always.

"Hey!" Anzu batted him away, as always. "Grimy mitts _off_ the food!"

"Then how am I supposed to eat it?"

"With clean mitts." She passed him a wet wipe, as always, which he grudgingly accepted, as always. He would have refused, except he knew there was no way he'd get anything to eat until she was satisfied he wouldn't give himself e-coli.

"You're such a bossy –"

"Watch it." Anzu's tone was warning. Until he met her, Honda hadn't known how much menace you could inject into words that weren't actually threatening.

"Razzin' frazzin' …" Jounouchi trailed off into meaningless chuntering. Finally he held up both hands and an extremely dirty wet wipe. "There. Happy?"

"Ecstatic," Anzu deadpanned.

"Whatever. Gimme the grub."

"Your manners are impeccable, Jounouchi. Remind me to enrol you in courtesy classes."

"Yeah right," he said through a mouthful of pizza. "Like I would ever –"

"Ew!" Honda held up his own hands. "Say it, don't spray it, dude!"

"Sorry."

Honda picked fragments of cheese and crust off his shirt, then accepted the slice wrapped in a napkin that Yuugi handed him. "Thanks."

"No problem." Yuugi eyed Anzu and Jounouchi as one might eye a powder keg after the fuse disappears inside, right before the boom. "Uh, guys? Anyone want to put the DVD in the machine?"

"I'll do it." Anzu got to her feet.

"Just make sure it ain't any of that chick-flick crap." Jounouchi grabbed a second slice of pizza. He plucked a few mushrooms off the neighbouring piece and slid them onto his own, leaving little red welts rimmed with yellow cheese where they'd been, like miniature crime-scene chalk-bodies.

Anzu delivered a small kick as she went past.

"Yowch!"

Honda smiled and bit into his slice before anybody could notice. The kick hadn't really hurt Jounouchi. Honda had been best friends with the guy for years. He knew just how much of a kicking Jounouchi could take. He had stood back-to-back with him in fights against guys bigger and more numerous than their two, had his face mashed alongside Jounouchi's, and left tracks of fire with the speed of their escape when they both realised they were out of their league. Honda liked to think they were equally tough, but when it came to taking a beating, he knew in the back of his mind that Jounouchi was better at it for one simple reason: his dad.

You couldn't be friends with Jounouchi without encountering his father, in reality or in story. Aside from that one time they went looking for Jounouchi at his apartment, when Hirutani had caught up with him, Anzu and Yuugi hadn't actually encountered the man. Honda, on the other hand, was all too familiar with what he was capable of. He had been there for some pretty dark times: incidents he knew Jounouchi would rather forget, and some he already had. Neither Anzu nor Yuugi knew about the scars that lurked under Jounouchi's thick blond hair, or the reason why a guy intelligent enough to master Duel Monsters to an international level was still so far behind in school.

Honda could still remember the day, years ago, when the school called Jounouchi's house to tell them he'd truanted, only to find he was actually in the hospital. His father claimed he'd fallen down the stairs earlier that week. Hospital records proved this to be true. He had then, according to his father, woken in the night complaining of a headache, before collapsing. Honda suspected the head wound from that first 'fall' had been magnified by fresh trauma, probably from Jounouchi being shaken like a rag doll, but for some reason the adults took the story at face value. Finding the actual truth was even more challenging by the fact Jounouchi genuinely couldn't remember huge stretches of his own life.

Honda suppressed a shudder at the memory of walking into a hospital room and his best friend looking at him like he was a stranger. The memories had come back eventually, but not all of them, and Jounouchi had missed a lot of school in the interim.

He had cried when he realised his mom and Shizuka were gone. Honda had never seen Jounouchi cry before. It had scared him. Jounouchi was tough. Jounouchi could take care of himself. Seeing him cry was a reminder that, when all was said and done, nobody was _that_ tough. Everybody needed a friend at some point in their lives. It was with a strange sense of honour that Honda realised, for Jounouchi, that friend was himself.

That was when he swore they'd never be parted, no matter what – a promise made before he knew of things like soul-sucking jewellery, ancient Egyptian magic, or megalomaniacal nutcases who fancied taking over the world. As a kid, Honda could never have predicted the kinds of things they'd have to deal with in their teens. He had thought it would be just acne, bullying and girls. There had been all that, too, but he bet no other teenagers had it quite like they did. He liked to think he would have made the promise anyway, though. Best buds forever.

Girls. Huh. Now wasn't _that_ a whole other can of worms? Still, whatever he thought of Mai (and he thought a whole bunch of things, many of them unrepeatable), Honda knew he would continue to be there for Jounouchi, and stand by him no matter what he decided to do about his crazy-ass love life. Honda suspected 'being there for him' may involve punching, insults and a few home-truths, but they'd cross that bridge when they came to it. For now, there were other girl issues to be resolved – issues currently flying through the air with a murderous expression.

"Take your hands _off_ my pizza!" Anzu yelled, launching herself onto Jounouchi's back as he attempted to stuff both his third and fourth slices into his mouth at once.

"Mrrf! Gerroff!"

"Pig! Greedy pig! Fat greedy pig!"

"You want 'em back? Here!"

"Eeew! Eweweweweweweweeeeeeeew! Like I want them _now_?"

"What? They seem fine to me."

"You've half chewed them!"

"I might as well finish the job then."

"So you have four slices of pizza and I have none?"

"Hey, you gotta watch that waistline of yours. Think of this as me helping you beat the muffin-top. Your jeans have been looking pretty snug lately."

Anzu froze. She slid from his back, took a step away and just stared. "I can't believe you just said that." Abruptly, her jaw tightened and she whapped him harder than usual between his shoulder-blades. "You're a jerk, Katsuya Jounouchi. A complete and total _jerk_!" She slammed out of the room, tears glistening in her eyes.

Yuugi, Honda and Jounouchi stared at the closed door. None of them knew quite what to say. They weren't sure what had just _happened_.

"Whoa," Jounouchi said eventually. "That was even more intense than usual."

"I think you went overboard that time, man," said Honda.

"I've said way worse than that before. What gives?"

Yuugi had the answer. Naturally. "Her new dance coach told her she needs to lose weight."

"Seriously?" Despite being capable of the most insensitive comments this side of Mars, and what he himself had just said, Jounouchi was indignant. "She's not like one of those skinny models, but she's not a heifer either. She's … well, she's Anzu. She's fine. Her losing weight would be rid-goddamn-diculous."

"Anzu thought so too. She had a massive argument with the woman, especially after one of their troupe was hospitalised with anorexia last semester."

"What did her coach say?" Honda asked.

"She basically told Anzu she could drop five pounds or find another group."

"Bitch!" Jounouchi exclaimed.

Yuugi refrained from comment. "Anzu's had it on her mind all day. She hasn't made a decision yet. It's pretty late to be finding a new troupe to put down on her resume, but she feel really strongly about this whole issue. You know how she got when we had to do that debating in class?"

"Do we ever," said Honda.

They all remembered how Anzu had held forth against the other speaker chosen by their teacher, opposing the motion they'd posed: 'Size Zero celebrities aren't to blame for rising percentages of teenage girls with eating disorders'. Anzu had started off indignant and progressively driven herself into a frenzy of righteous female anger. She had made many points, each more passionate than the last, and cited all sorts of positive role models. She'd gotten so into it she had actually been breathing hard when she sat down, and it wasn't until later she realised she'd realised some of the celebrities she'd named: among them Mai Kujaku and Vivian Wong. To her credit, she'd been shamefaced and apologised to Jounouchi for bringing up the very person they'd all been trying not to remind him of for the past six months.

One glance at Jounouchi's face told Honda he was remembering exactly that part of the incident, too.

Yuugi got to his feet, brushing breadcrumbs from his lap. "I'll go talk to her."

"Maybe I should," Jounouchi suggested, though it was clear he'd rather do anything but.

Yuugi shook his head. "She'll listen to me. I don't think you should talk to her until she's had a chance to cool off, otherwise she may say something she regrets and you'll end up both feeling lousy."

It was testament to how well they knew each other that neither Honda nor Jounouchi challenged this, or felt resentful. Yuugi left them sitting opposite each other, the remaining pizza congealing in its box between them.

"Man." Jounouchi put his head in his hands. "I always screw up when it comes to women and saying the wrong thing. I thought Anzu, of all people, could take anything I could dish out."

"Everyone has their buttons, dude. You're just incredibly talented at finding and pushing them. Repeatedly. Really hard."

"And they're usually marked 'push for explosion'." Jounouchi groaned.

They both fell silent.

"Hey, Honda?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think …" Jounouchi trailed off.

"What?"

"No. Nothing. Forget I said anything."

"Yeah, because telling someone to do that _always_ works." Honda rolled his eyes. "Spill. What's up? Still feel guilty about Anzu?"

"Well, yeah. No matter how many times she says it, I'm not actually a complete asshole." His eyes flicked to the door. "I shouldn't leave Yuugi to clean up my screw-ups all the time."

"You don't. You have a surprisingly good hit-rate and cleaning up your own screw-ups. Of course, you usually make them way worse first, but they get cleaned up in the end."

"Thanks. You're a pal. Next time I need a pep talk, remind me to stick my hands in acid instead of coming to you." Jounouchi looked thoroughly depressed.

Honda sighed. He knew where this was leading. "You're thinking about her again, aren't you?"

Another testament to their friendship: Honda didn't have to say Mai's name and Jounouchi didn't expect him to. He was well aware of how Honda felt about Mai. While she had redeemed herself a lot by sacrificing her soul trying to retrieve Jounouchi's from DOMA, the fact was it never would have been taken if she hadn't duelled him using the Orichalcos. Mai had done a lot of bad things, and had a lot to answer for. Being in pain herself only worked for so long, before taking responsibility for your own actions has to kick in. In Honda's eyes, Mai was a long way from being redeemed.

Jounouchi grunted. It was all the answer Honda needed. "You can't keep beating yourself up, man."

"I know."

"It's not healthy."

"I know that, too, but it's not like it's something I can switch off on command." He chuckled mirthlessly. "Now _that_ would be a handy button to find and push."

Honda didn't respond. With Jounouchi, sometimes you got more that way.

He was right on the nose. A minute later, Jounouchi's entire upper body crumpled forward onto the table. "I can't help it, Honda. I think about her, like, every _day_. I wonder what she's up to, if she's in hospital in another coma somewhere, whether she's eating right. I imagine all kind of terrible things happening to her: motorcycle accidents, rogue duellists, muggings, not having anyplace to stay the night …" He caught Honda's eye. "I know, okay.I_ know_! Way to be pathetic and soppy. I'm the stupid puppy biting at the ankles of the more mature woman who doesn't even care I exist."

"Well, she's older, at least," Honda said, unwilling to put Mai and 'mature' in the same sentence. Mai was more experienced and worldly than them – or at least she had been when they first met in Duellist Kingdom – but based on her M.O. for dealing with personal issues, she was one of the most immature people Honda had ever known. He got the feeling this was the last thing Jounouchi needed to hear, though. He fumbled for something complimentary. "And … she does care about you," he conceded with difficulty.

"Yeah, that's why my answer-phone's been jammed with missed calls."

"You don't have an answer-phone."

Jounouchi shot him a dirty look, but it didn't last. "I dunno, man." He pillowed his chin on his folded arms. "Maybe it's time I faced facts: she's not coming back. And," he added, tipping his face to hide it in the crook of an elbow, "that I'm the winner of today's Lousiest Friend Award. I just offended Anzu and what am I doing? Am I chasing after her to apologise? No, I'm agonising about my crappy love life. Again."

"If Yuugi doesn't come back soon, you should go look for them," said Honda. "But I'm sticking to my guns on the Mai thing. She does care about you, dude. We already established she's crappier than a poodle with the squirts about showing it, but she _does_ care. The fact she hasn't come back yet kind of shows that."

"Say what?"

"Think about it."

"I am thinking. It still doesn't make any sense, and my brain's starting to hurt."

"Big surprise. What I mean is, she said she was going to get help and figure out how to deal with her personal problems before she can face you, right?" He referred to the letter Mai had left behind when she took off into the sunset like the Lone Motorcycle Ranger. There had been no promise to return, and no way to get in touch after it was delivered to the Game Shop a week after Mai left. "We all know she has some stuff in her history she never really dealt with, but she was willing to go face it because she wants to see you again someday, and she doesn't want that hanging over her head when she does. Are you following me so far?"

Jounouchi glared at him.

"Don't give me that look. This is hard for me to say. I hate giving Mai more credit than she deserves, but in this case … much as it pains me to admit it … she deserves credit for doing the right thing. She wants to be right and fix the things that are wrong inside before she can face you again. It's not fair for her to pull you into her personal mess after what she did to you."

"But I _want_ to help her deal with her personal shit."

"First off, don't call it 'personal shit'. That sounds disrespectful and pisses people off. Secondly, Mai has to want you want to actively help her. Until then, you're passively helping her."

"Say _what_? I heard the words coming out of your mouth, dude, but the way you ordered them made no sense."

Honda let loose a sigh strong enough to uproot entire forests. "You're her goal, you idiot. You're what she's working towards, her motivation, her objective, her driving force – are any of _these_ words ringing bells, or do you only have empty space and bats in your belfry?"

"You make me sound like some freaking damsel in distress."

Honda grinned. "Well, you kinda are."

Jounouchi sat bolt upright. "Say that again, I dare you. That way I can tell the police you provoked me when they find your body."

"You needed rescuing when Dartz took your soul, right? You're the incentive for Mai to go on her own heroic quest, _and_ you wore a dress when you lost that bet with Anzu. A sparkly pink dresswith a tiara and satin slippers. I have pictures."

"It wasn't a dress," Jounouchi said unthinkingly. "It was a tutu." His eyes widened as he realised what he'd said. "Uh, I mean – ah fuck. I ain't no damsel in distress. And what do you mean, 'pictures'?"

Honda continued to grin. Indignation and wounded male ego was better than Jounouchi moping like a lovelorn idiot from a Silhouette novel. Not that Honda had ever ready any. Honest! It was just that his big sister used to leave them around the house all the time, and, being a curious kid, he'd wanted to know why some pages were more well-thumbed than others. And if he'd skipped through a couple of chapters to find out what happened, like whether the couple really did end up together, well … _well that was nobody's business but his own_!

Jounouchi glowered with the force of a rumbling volcano. "Wipe that shit-eating grin off your face or I'll do it for you."

If anything, Honda's smile widened. "Atta boy."

Jounouchi blinked. Opened his mouth. Closed it again. Somehow he managed to glower and smile at the same time. "Shit-eater."

They both looked up when the door opened. Anzu's cheeks were pink but her expression wavered between defiant and hostile. Her gaze ticked from one to the other, taking in their faces, postures and the general air of the room. Sparks of suspicion appeared in her eyes. "Okay, what have you two been plotting while we were gone?"

"World domination," Honda said without hesitation.

"Using penguins," added Jounouchi in the same heartbeat.

Anzu shuddered. The mention of penguins always reminded her of Noah's virtual world and her duel there, which they knew. "You two are sick and creepy."

"And we didn't even tell you the part about bikinis and ice-cubes."

She made a disgusted face, but came back into the room and plopped down at the table. She poked disconsolately at the remaining pizza. "I don't want this anymore."

Jounouchi's face darkened. "Don't you dare get weird about food just because some dried-up old has-been ballerina is so jealous of her fading looks she wants to kill off the replacement generation. You're fine the way you are. Screw her."

Anzu didn't look convinced. "Great pep talk, but I already got one of those from Yuugi."

"Where is he?" Honda asked.

Anzu shrugged. "Bathroom, I think." She broke off a crumb of pizza crust and crumbled it between her fingers. "I know Yuugi told you about what happened at dance class."

"Do you mind?"

"I guess not." She sighed. "There's just no easy answer."

"To whether Yuugi's really in the bathroom?" Honda quipped. It fell flat.

"There never is. That's the problem." Jounouchi's voice was filled with grim certainty. Given what he and Honda had just been discussing, Honda wasn't surprised. "It doesn't mean there's _no_ answer, though. You'll figure it out, Anzu. You're good at that."

"I wish I had your confidence in me. You like to make out I'm this bossy control freak who thinks she always has all the answers, and that I force everyone to do things my way because I think I know best. It's easy to turn me into this walking cliché. Sometimes I ask for it. But I'm human, Jounouchi. I make mistakes, just like everyone else, but so close to graduation, I can't afford for this to be one of them. It only takes one bad choice to mess up everything. Nobody can predict the wider consequences of their actions."

"I guess." Jounouchi refused to meet Honda's eye. "Hey, you want I should go pound this crusty old dance teacher for you?"

"Why do all your solutions involve violence or food? Totally disregarding the fact you'd never hit a woman, especially an old one."

"Well … yeah, there is that," Jounouchi admitted. "But I could at least let the air outta her tyres."

"She doesn't own a car, and can't drive anyway. She walks everywhere – with weights on her ankles and wrists as exercise."

"I could toilet paper her house?"

"She lives in an apartment on the forty-fourth floor."

"Egg her after class?"

"She carries this pretentious lacy parasol everywhere and she's pretty handy with it."

"You're not making this easy."

"Should I?"

Jounouchi blew out a breath. "I suppose not." His face registered pain of a different kind. It took him a moment to say what he knew he had to. "I'm … sorry. I was a jerk."

"Yes, you were." Anzu's bald statement belied her softening expression. "But you're you. I've learned to deal with that handicap. I make it a policy to be kind to children, the mentally challenged and dumb animals. Just don't pee on the carpet, bark at the neighbours, or try to chase cars, okay?"

Jounouchi did the most perfect double-take Honda had seen in a long time. Honda covered his laughter, but not well. Jounouchi glared at him.

Then he bumped shoulders with Anzu. "So … are we cool?"

"Shut up."

"Is that a yes?"

"We should clear the table if nobody's going to eat this."

"We aren't eating?" Jounouchi shot her a suspicious look. "Anzu, I wasn't kidding –"

"We are eating, but I was serious when I said half-chewed pizza isn't my idea of a good meal."

"So what –"

The door opened. Yuugi backed into the room, turning to reveal a tray of hoagies he had obviously been making while they talked. The submarine sandwiches seemed to gleam. Honda's mouth watered. Yuugi made sandwiches that tasted better than the topmost meal in the most expensive restaurant Domino City had to offer.

Anzu grinned. "I refuse to compromise who I am, Jounouchi. I just have to figure a way around the problem that means I can stay true to myself at the same time, without cutting my nose off the spite my face. It's not an easy answer, but even difficult solutions are achievable if you put your mind to it."

Jounouchi stared straight at her, but Honda got the feeling he was seeing a different face, and applying what she'd said to another situation. Jounouchi shook himself. "Hey, Yuugi, is that a Cuban Sandwich I see before me?"

"Almost. We didn't have any Cuban bread, so I had to use regular subs, but I made one with ham, pork, Swiss cheese, pickles, mustard, and salami because I know it's your favourite type after you tried them at Kaiba's Grand Prix."

"And mayo? You remembered the mayo, right?"

"I brought the pot so you could add as much as you want."

"You," Jounouchi said reverentially, "are officially the best friend I have ever had."

"Hey!" Honda protested.

"Sorry, dude. You're great with the advice and the insights and the wake-up calls, but my stomach thinks my throat has been cut and is doing my talking for me right now."

"Be grateful," said Anzu. "Usually he talks out of a totally different orifice."

"A different what?" Jounouchi flicked a suspicious glance at her.

She just looked at him, her meaning clear in her expression in the way only a few women could manage. Jounouchi started to argue with her some more, but stopped himself. He wasn't in any position to pick fights when he was only a few steps in front of the doghouse door. He fell to chuntering instead, and then diligent chewing interspersed with delighted groans as he attacked his hoagie.

Honda shook his head. _Maybe Mai's better off staying away from this insanity._ He watched his friends. Even he couldn't maintain his usual Mai-based anger in this kind of atmosphere. _Nah._

* * *

_._


	10. Role Model

**.**

* * *

**Coda Three: Role Model**

* * *

Shizuka put down the phone and stared at it. Yet another call in which her brother palmed her off with half-truths. She would have been insulted at how weak they were getting, except that she'd heard the tightness in his voice and backed off after it snapped like a piece of brittle wire. Once upon a time she would have been devastated by his reaction, but today she was more worried about him than herself and her own hurt feelings. She was keyed into his changing moods far more than she had been when they were kids. Back then she'd thought he was always so strong. Nowadays she knew that wasn't always the case, however much he tried to hide the fact he was only human.

Recently she only had to mention Mai for him to jump in with some excuse. Mai was out of town. Mai was on vacation. Mai was duelling overseas. Mai was visiting family. That last one was especially upsetting since Shizuka knew Mai _had_ no family.

Mai had confessed this piece of information not long after she woke up on Kaiba's blimp. She had dozed off – despite just coming out of a coma she'd been incredibly tired – and Shizuka's own head had just nodded onto her chest when Mai sat bolt upright in the bed, shiny with sweat and breathing like she'd run a marathon. Her skin had been icy to the touch. Shizuka had wanted to call for help, but Mai had insisted she was fine.

"Just a … a bad dream," she'd said. "I've had it before." She sounded surprised, as if she hadn't expected to have it again.

"Do you want to talk about it? When I have nightmares they don't leave my head until I talk with my mom and tell her what's on my mind." Shizuka had flushed, wondering what impression Mai had of her mother. The only impression her new friends had was a woman who had chosen one child over the other and left her son with an abusive father. Shizuka wanted to put them straight, but didn't know how to make them understand: her mother wasn't evil, she was just … she had been put in an impossible situation and made the wrong choices. That wasn't evil. That was just human.

For a long time Shizuka hadn't wanted to contact her brother to tell him about how much her eyes had deteriorated, in case he wanted nothing more to do with her. She'd been scared he would resent her for being the one their mother chose to keep. She had been relieved to find he didn't hold a grudge, and then even more guilty for ever doubting him. He may have changed since she saw him last, but he was still her precious, overprotective Big Brother. Opening her eyes for the first time to see him swinging across the dock on a chain only confirmed that. Likewise when he ran out onto the duelling field to save Mai from Malik's attack.

Saying Mai meant a lot to her brother was like saying the Bermuda Triangle was a little bit mysterious. Mai was good for him, too. She gave as good as she got and made an effective foil for his rambunctious personality. Mai was too competent not to be taken seriously, but she wasn't _serious _like Seto Kaiba or even Bakura. Mai knew how to have fun, and had a wicked side Shizuka wished she could emulate half as well. Her brother clearly adored Mai, so Shizuka had wanted to make sure she was okay after her terrible ordeal on the airship. Listening to a bad dream seemed the least she could do.

However, Mai had shaken her head. "Just give me a minute. I'll be fine. As soon as I swap back my heart for this hummingbird's, that is." Her wry smile hadn't fooled Shizuka. Mai had apparently known this, too, because she'd added, "I never got into that whole 'talk out your problems' thing. Talk is cheap when it comes to troubles. I never liked it much."

"Not even with your mom?"

"My family died a long time ago."

"Ohmygosh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean –"

"It's okay. Really. We weren't close. Not the way you and your mom are, to hear you talk."

Shizuka had dropped her eyes and wished fervently that it didn't feel so inappropriate to love her mom these days. It never used to feel like she was doing something wrong. Being back in her brother's life had brought heartache as well as joy.

Their mother had done all she could to raise Shizuka properly; to keep her happy and healthy, and to teach her right from wrong. Nothing could ever erase what she'd done to her son, but she'd made sure her daughter was all right, and often sacrificed her own happiness and wellbeing for it. Nobody knew about the arthritis in her left wrist and fingers, which had grown steadily worse over the years but been left untreated because all their money funnelled into a fund for Shizuka's many eye operations. Nobody knew how often they'd dined on inexpensive rice noodles and ramen, or how rarely they'd had meat to keep living costs low; or how the hem on Shizuka's school skirt had been let down so many times there were no stitches left to unpick. It had seemed like scoring points for Shizuka to call attention to these things after her brother paid those staggering medical bills with his prize money; as if she was belittling what he'd done by trying to force him to forgive their mother for the unforgiveable.

Shizuka had been thinking these things, elbows slowly straightening and hands balling into fists in her lap, when Mai broke into her thoughts with a light touch on her knee. Shizuka had snapped her gaze up and immediately apologised for zoning out.

"Don't say you're sorry when there's nothing to feel sorry for. You look exhausted. When was the last time you slept?"

"I'm all right."

"You're not, but you won't admit it – just like your dunderheaded brother."

Somehow, when Mai call him names, it never sounded like she was insulting him. Shizuka had never known name-calling could sound affectionate until she met Mai.

There were worse things than to want to be more like Mai Kujaku.

Except that after Battle City, Shizuka had never seen Mai again. At first she hadn't been worried: Mai didn't live in Domino or Tokyo, so it made sense that neither Shizuka nor her brother would see her regularly. Mai worked as a professional duellist, so she was bound to move around a lot.

But then Shizuka finally did ask her whereabouts, and the excuses started. With them came an unsettling sense that her brother was hiding something, and Shizuka no longer knew him well enough to know what questions would make him open up that much. Their sibling relationship had suffered during the years of separation. Though they'd made headway, and sometimes had flashes of insight that could only come with age, they were nowhere near as familiar with each other as they'd been as children.

She continued to stare at the phone, eventually heaving a sigh and rising to her feet. Her stomach rumbled, so she went through to the kitchen, where her mother had her head in a cupboard. She had to stretch up to reach a box of rice crackers. Shizuka frowned; had her mom always been that short? And what about those grey hairs swirling out from the parting at the back of her skull – had they always been there?

Her mother didn't look around as she asked, "Who was that, sweetheart?"

"Big Brother," Shizuka said without thinking.

Her mother froze for a half-second, but then shook it off. "Is he all right?" She almost kept the hint of guilt and longing from her voice. Almost. She regretted what she'd done when they were kids. That was one of the hardest parts of this whole thing: knowing a bond had been shattered that needn't have been, and hadn't even come close to healing. despite the years that had passed.

And why should her mother – _their_ mother – expect forgiveness? She _had_ done a terrible thing. There was no denying it. She had done what no parent should ever do: she had failed to protect her child.

Impulsively, Shizuka wrapped her mother in a hug. She squawked, hit the counter with her hip, and flailed uncomprehendingly until she realised she wasn't about to fall over after all. "Um, sweetheart? Shizuka? Is everything okay?" She paused. Shizuka felt her breathe in before asking, "Is something wrong with Katsuya?"

"He's fine."

"Oh."

"Except –" Shizuka stopped. She bit her lip. It wasn't her place to tell her brother's secrets – especially to their mother, of all people. He had never actually come out and said it, but Shizuka knew he was very close to hating their mother, which was awful on so many levels.

"Shizuka, please, if he's hurt or in trouble, I want you to tell me."

_But you didn't seem to care for so long. You said he got into trouble because he was a screw-up. You said we had to stay apart because he was a bad influence – because he was just like Daddy. _Shizuka remembered how her mother had been at the hospital, cursing her son when he was late and an easy target, even though she hadn't seen him in an age. It was wrong of her to use him that way, as an object on which to vent her own frustration, pain and fear. It wasn't fair and it wasn't right that even when he was doing right, their mother made him feel like he was doing wrong.

But the look in her mother's eyes now was one of unabashed concern. She looked like she _did_ care about her son, and at the same time knew she didn't really have the right to anymore. It was a hesitant emotion in her eyes, which made Shizuka's heart constrict like when Noah turned Mokuba and Seto Kaiba to stone milliseconds before they reached each other's arms.

All relationships could be healed if you really wanted it. If you were willing to put in the effort, you could move mountains, right? Mai had taught Shizuka that when she came out of her coma.

"_I haven't seen Mai in a while, okay, sis? So quit asking already. I don't know where she is. I … I don't know anything. Period."_

Big Brother never snapped. Not at her; not ever. But he had today, and it had shocked Shizuka.

"I think," she said, quickly, like when you rip off a band aid before you can change your mind, and hope desperately that if you do it fast enough the pain won't have time to catch up. "I think Big Brother's heart is broken. Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. I'm not sure."

"Oh …" Their mother's face registered grief. She dropped her eyes and shook her head. "I doubt he'd want to hear from me if that's the case."

"Maybe not, Mom. Maybe he does need to speak to you this time." Maybe he needed to speak to her ten years ago, six months ago, last week, fifteen minutes ago when Shizuka already had him on the phone. "Would you call him? Please?"

"I can't, swee-"

"Yes you can!"

Her mother stared, sensing the sudden change in the atmosphere. Just as Big Brother never snapped at Shizuka, Shizuka never shouted at her mother. It was a day of changes. Why not make it one more? He was obviously in pain. Maybe healing old rifts would help him cope with whatever new one had driven Mai to parts unknown.

Her mother swallowed hard. The box of rice crackers trembled ever so slightly in her hands. "A-All right, sweetheart. I'll try. It's late, I'll call first thing in the morning, but he probably won't want to speak to me," she added quickly.

"At least you'd have tried," Shizuka said, not knowing just how true her words were. "Trying to do something is halfway to achieving it, and the other half is all downward slope. You've already fought most of the battle if you have the courage to try in the first place."

* * *

.


	11. Prodigal

**.**

**

* * *

**

**Coda Four: Prodigal**

* * *

Jounouchi linked his hands behind his head and yawned. It was bumblefuck in the morning and someone was trying to knock his door down. At least, that's what it sounded like. Who the hell could be it at this hour? In this neighbourhood, that was a loaded question. Either someone was dead, dying, or had passed out at the bottom of the stairwell and needed help getting up to their apartment. The local kids all knew Jounouchi was the one to call on with that sort of problem, since he never said no or told them to go away, but it often meant nights of broken sleep.

This time, however, it didn't sound like any local kids. It didn't sound like kids at all.

"Are you sure this is the right address?"

"Have I ever steered you wrong?"

"Constantly. So many times, in fact, I'm not even sure why I keep double-teaming with you."

"Because I'm so wonderful and caring and generous, and you needed someone to take you under her wing while you rediscovered your love of Duel Monsters so you could finally go off and take on the European Championship like you planned?"

"I … you … that's totally beside the point! And you're not wonderful and caring and generous. You recognised me from that damn cruise ship and knew my skills could save any duel you screwed up with your stupid risk-taking."

Jounouchi shook his head, still fuggy with sleep. _What the hell? _The voices outside his apartment were female and sounded a hairsbreadth away from an all-out catfight. While this would usually please, or at least intrigue him, bumblefuck in the morning was bumblefuck in the morning.

He shot an anxious glance at his father's door, but all was silent – in a manner of speaking. The snoring was a litmus test. While it was going on, his father was safely out of the picture. He had downed an entire bottle of something – Jounouchi no longer took any notice of labels – before bed, so maybe Jounouchi would get lucky and the old man would be out of it until lunchtime tomorrow. It wouldn't be the first time.

"Yow! That's my _hair_!"

"Oh grow up."

"_Me _grow up? Look who's talking!"

"Yeah, the mature one."

"Only in years, old hag."

"Why you little –"

"Yow!"

"I can't believe I came with you. What was I thinking? Catharsis my ass. You're just carting the world's biggest pity party around to the guests instead of inviting them to your place."

"Oh shut up. Can I help it if our train was late? I didn't even realise where we were until … look, it took me this long to remember the way to this apartment; I was _not_ going to risk forgetting it again just so we could make it to the hotel quicker, even if we do have that charity duel tomorrow. Otogi will understand – like he understood when I asked him not to say we were coming to Domino – and you can catch up on your jetlag later. I … I need to do this, Vivian."

Vivian? Jounouchi blinked. No wonder one of those voices sounded familiar: Vivian Wong, the psycho stalker who had practically eviscerated Rebecca and Anzu in a grudge match for Yuugi at Kaiba Corp Grand Prix. Not to mention that stunt she'd pulled with Grandpa Mutou. And the rest. That woman was scary. Jounouchi backed away from the door like the handle was made of barbed wire.

"Please try to understand," the other voice went on, not quite pleading, but not far off either. Something about it chimed in Jounouchi, but the unfamiliar tone and his own sleepiness and fear of Vivian sent his thoughts skittering away.

Vivian sighed. "Don't I always? It's a good thing I like you enough to consider you a friend. Of course, the moment your game starts to slide, you are gone from my life, sister." The mocking note in her voice belayed the seriousness of her words.

"Thanks, hon."

"Don't call me hon."

"Okay. Viv."

"Are you _trying_ to bleed?"

The distant chime turned into a bell over his head. Shock rocketed through Jounouchi like ice water. He was instantly, irrefutably awake. That 'hon' did it, slotting a face and voice together in his brain. He cursed himself for not figuring it out sooner, made it to the door in record time, wrenched it open … and stopped dead.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid –_

Typical. Months and months of waiting to see her again, and not only did she turn up in the early hours, when he looked like he'd just crawled out of the primordial soup, but every single word he'd wanted to say vanished from his mind. Whoosh. Just like that: total blank canvas.

Aw crap, was his mouth open? Had he drooled while he was asleep?

Mai stared back with confusion and dawning realisation, one fist raised as if to knock.

Beside her, Vivian raised an eyebrow. "You?" She looked at Mai. "I thought you said you were looking for some boy you met when you were a kid."

"I was. I am." Mai's eyes got wider and wider. "Oh my …"

"So the kid moved out and this loser lives here now instead?" Vivian snorted. "Talk about a small world! I guess you won't be surprising him tomorrow at the charity duel after all."

Charity duel? Yes, Jounouchi remembered something about that. Yuugi was headlining and Otogi's company bankrolling it. Jounouchi was also on the list of attractions, but some way below his best friend's, just above 'and other mystery guest stars you don't want to miss'. He had agreed to attend, despite his wounded ego, after Anzu held forth about the nobility of raising money for hostels to help teenage runaways. That and because Seto Kaiba refused to compete, and making that guy look like the arrogant asshole he was struck Jounouchi as Never A Bad Thing.

Jounouchi's mouth was as wet as a desert, but he still managed to croak, "Mai?"

Vivian elbowed her. "He's talking to you," she stage whispered.

Mai didn't react. "I never saw it before," she murmured. "You never said anything. You didn't say who you were." She scrunched up her face. "It is you, isn't it, Katsuya?"

Jounouchi reeled. His reply was automatic. "Hey, nobody calls me that 'cept my mom." Then he frowned. He had never told Mai his first name. "How did you know –?"

"It _is_ you," she breathed, like he'd just admitted he was secretly a superhero. "I never knew … I never recognised you. You were there, right beside me all that time. You never _said _anything …" Her voice dropped to a stunned whisper. "You really have been there for me all along, just like you said."

"Say what? What the hell are you talking about?" He winced. "Wait, that is … so not what I wanted to say when I pictured this happening. Damn it."

Vivian looked between the two of them like a spectator at a Ping-Pong match. She grinned. "I smell a story of epic proportions here." She grabbed Jounouchi and yanked him out of the apartment and shut the door behind him.

"Hey!" he protested. "I don't have my key!"

"I also hear the garglings of a pissed daddy who has no place in it," Vivian went on blithely, ignoring him as if he hadn't spoken. "C'mon, kiddies. I spotted an all-night café down the street. It's time you two had a good long –" She waggled her eyebrows.

As fairy godmothers went, Vivian Wong wouldn't have even made Jounouchi's shortlist. She wouldn't have even been a _candidate_ for the shortlist.

"Viv!" Mai snapped. "Get your mind out of the gutter."

"What? _What_? I was going to saytalk. A good long _talk_."

"Yeah right."

Vivian waggled her eyebrows again. "Can I help it if you're perverted?"

Mai sighed, turned to Jounouchi – and _bowed_. "Before we go any further, I have to say this: I'm sorry."

"Bwuh?"

"Great response there, bucko," Vivian muttered. "Really heart-warming. I'm welling up. Truly."

Jounouchi scowled at her. "Mai, you already apologised in your letter –"

"I'm not apologising for that or … I am, or I will be, but this is for something else. Something I did a long time ago."

"Huh?"

Vivian rolled her eyes. "Café. Coffee. Now. Then you talk, and I don't let either of your walk out of there until you've ironed out every little wrinkle there is between you. And I sense there may be some you weren't even _aware_ of until now." She tapped her chin. "_Lots_ of coffee." She chuckled and gave herself a little thumb's up. "And then a happy ending, if I have anything to do with it. I never imagined I'd be getting brownie points with Yuugi when I agreed to do this. Luckyyyyyy!" She squealed and held her upturned fists under her chin, evidently trying to look cute. She just looked scarier than ever, Jounouchi thought.

"Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?" he said.

"You don't remember?" Mai looked panicked.

"I remember _you_, Mai," he hastily assured her. Malik had once used his magic to erase her friends from her memory, so God knew what she was thinking about him and _his _memory right now. They had a habit of coming back to each other damaged and broken, after all. "How the hell could I ever forget you?" _How could I forget the woman I fell in love with despite spending more time apart from her than I ever did with her?_

_Waitasecond – love? Bad word. Too heavy duty. Stay away from the mucho serioso stuff until you figure out what's going on here. _

Vivian slung an arm around his shoulders before he could stop her. "Aw, he's all flummoxed. It's quite sweet, actually. _Très adorable_."

"Your French accent stinks, Viv."

"Whereas lover-boy's pits just plain stink." She waved a hand under her nose. "Pee-yu! Ever hear of deodorant?"

Jounouchi was mortified. And confused. _Extremely_ confused. He slipped out from Vivian's grasp and formed his hands into a T shape. "Back up. Timeout. Whatever. Just stop, okay. This is all too much – you both being here, now, after all this time, without any warning … Look, I think I'm entitled to a little processing time. And possibly some freaking out time." He watched Vivian warily. "Not to mention, what the heck am I supposed to not have remembered this time?"

Mai's face registered hurt, but it was gone in an instant, replaced not with her usual bravado, but with resolve and a trace of fear and hesitancy. Jounouchi stared. She managed to look beautiful through it all, but he had never seen that particular mix of emotions in her before. Not like that. She had always hidden her frailties, and any time he had caught a glimpse had been accidental. Now she looked … both older and younger somehow. He couldn't explain it, but there was something different about her whole demeanour, as if she had finally made peace with herself, like her letter had promised she would before she came back to him.

Hope flared in Jounouchi. He tried to temper it with realism, but it was like one of those trick birthday cake candles that keep relighting no matter how man times you blew them out.

"A long time ago," Mai said, "you helped a stupid rich girl who had run away from home with no plan or place to go. She sat out in the rain." She pointed. "Under that streetlight, and you went to help her."

Jounouchi looked and tried to remember. It was harder than Mai realised. His memories of a childhood with Shizuka were crystal, and his years as a two-bit bully under Hirutani, but the middle segment was a morass of half-remembered fragments and shifting images that felt like dreams, but may not have been. There were pieces missing, too. Whole stretches of time were just gone.

He didn't talk much about the accident that had wiped clean parts of his mind. Likewise, he didn't talk about the time in which he had made the transition from loving big brother to a thug who liked to smash faces. Things had happened then that screwed up his head even more than it was already screwed up. The accident had messed up his recall and place on the learning curve, but he had continued a steady decline into forgetting who he really was, instead forging a new identity as a gangbanger, and deeper, into someone more sinister. It wasn't until Honda dragged him away from Hirutani, and Yuugi dragged him into realty, that Jounouchi realised he was turning into his father and finally took steps to fix himself. If anyone could understand Mai's quest to be a better person, it was him.

"You helped that girl, and when your father threatened her you told her to run away, which she did." Mai fixed him with a pointed look. "Something she has always regretted. Think hard, Jounouchi. Try and remember."

Jounouchi searched his memories until sweat prickled his brow … and suddenly he found something. Just a sliver – more an impression and an actually memory – which slipped away from him like he was trying to grab a single fish from a massive, constantly moving shoal. It was something to do with a broken umbrella and wet hair.

No, not wet hair. Wet … scalp? He had covered his head because … it was cold and he'd needed … a hat? He'd had no hair, that was it! And he'd had no hair because … because he had been shaved at the hospital.

Was he remembering this right? It _felt_ right, but he wasn't exactly known for his ability to make good decisions in a hurry off the duelling field. He dug deeper, hoping for something more concrete.

"You don't even know me," he mumbled.

"What did you just say?" Mai asked.

Jounouchi rubbed his head. "I dunno. Sounded right." He raised his gaze. "Does that mean something to you?" he asked hopefully.

She nodded. "It really is you. I can't believe it. It was _you_ all along …"

"Oh-kaaaaay" Vivian stepped between them. "Much as it paaaains me to interrupt this Hallmark Movie of the Week moment, I was serious about the java, kiddies. A concrete walkway in this," she curled her lip, "_evocative_ part of town is no place for the kind of tête-à-tête you two are in for."

Jounouchi looked at the apartment door, frowned, and turned back to the two women. "All right," he said at last. "You so owe me some explanations, Mai."

"More than you could ever know," she said softly. Jounouchi resisted the urge to boggle at this new, subdued version of her.

"Huh?"

Vivian rubbed her hands, then pressed one to each of their backs, steering them away. It didn't seem to matter – or even occur to her – that Jounouchi was barefoot and in his pyjamas. It didn't occur to him either. He only had eyes for Mai, and the way the combination of silvery moonlight and yellow light from streetlamp bounced off her hair in such a familiar way.

"_I always thought it w-was dumb, i-in movies. The part where the k-kid blubs and s-says about … about never saying … about never telling the people she loves that … that she … cheesy as hell, b-but … but it's not."_

Vivian's grin was brighter than any streetlight. She giggled at some private joke. "Trust me, hon, you ain't heard _nothing_ yet."

_**

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**_

Fin.

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**A/N: **And that's it (properly this time), folks. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Feedback is very much appreciated!


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